How Do You Keep Employees and Prevent High Turnover?
With pensions a thing of the past, most employees don’t have the mindset that they will work for you until they retire! So how do you prevent high turnover and keep those high-quality employees for the long term? Here are a few suggestions after hearing feedback from my employees for the past 25 years:
Corporate Culture: Providing a functional, organized and respectful corporate culture is key to retaining employees. If all team members knows what they are supposed to accomplish (goals and job descriptions) and you have functional, high-energy employees on the team who all abide by your Core Values and who are all striving for the same goals (mission statement), you will have a winning corporate culture and they won’t want to leave!
Pay Your Employees a Good Salary: You should strive at all times to have the best players on your team. Retaining those key employees means paying them well for giving 100 percent and striving daily to take your company to the next level. The key is having hungry, smart, dedicated, humble, well-incentivized people to make it happen.
Recognition: There are two components to recognition. The first one is rewarding someone for contributions and meeting business objectives, basically going the extra mile for the company. The second one is rewarding employees for their dedication or “years of service” to your company. Many large corporations have completely done away with service award recognition and it’s really a shame. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to over the years who have decided to quit after 10, 15 or 20 years with one company because they don’t feel appreciated for their dedication. They have told me that receiving a corporate card and 10-year pin (for example) was like a slap in the face after dedicating that many years to one company. I know it’s expensive to have service awards in large corporations but they should find a way to make those anniversaries special for the employee.
Daily Recognition: We let our employees know their contributions matter not once a year but every day with a recognition program that allows employees to be nominated by their peers and their supervisors for going above and beyond, whether completing a big project or in a small way contributing to the success or culture of our organization. These nominations are posted continually throughout each quarter on a bulletin board in our break room. The one individual that stands out that quarter for his or her contributions receives a paid day off and we have a recognition lunch for all nominees and a drawing for gift card rewards. You must strive to celebrate success as often as possible and give your employees feedback daily. It takes work to have a program like this but it is so worth it in the long run.
Service Awards: Our service award program does include a small customized gift for each individual along with a monetary bonus based on years of service. The dollar amount of the award, in my opinion, isn’t as important as the fact these people are recognized for their dedication to the company. Our executive team takes it a step further by taking the individual to lunch with his or her team and presenting the service award. This serves two purposes: it recognizes the milestone accomplishment, but more importantly, it gives the managers/executives an opportunity to talk one-on-one with these individuals to find out how we are doing as a company, pick their brains for an hour in a relaxed setting to find out what they would like to see happen in the future and to get to know these individuals that are dedicating their lives to the company.
Remember the key is ensuring you have top-notch employees on your team – it’s an ongoing process as your company evolves. After you find the right team members you then need to reward them for their hard work and dedication – it’s a win-win in my book!
