Ideas to Improve Employee Retention in Company

Congratulations! You have hired a new team member, and this person appears to be the answer to your organization’s needs. As a leader, you can envision this new employee having a bright future with your company for the long term. This person will complement the organization’s goals beyond your greatest expectations…at least in your vision. How do you connect your vision of long-term achievement with your new employee’s formulating vision of achievement? From the beginning, effective communication about goals, culture and environment with your new team member helps ensure a true collaborative environment in which your new team member is motivated to commit to a productive tenure and reward your employee retention efforts.

How to Keep Your Employees Engaged

Even with a job market that is the most competitive in decades, employees come and go, and the cost of turnover for an organization is a financial and human capital hit that can sink the strongest of ships. Even the brightest employees with tremendous potential can and will leave if their needs are not met. Take a moment to look at some data about the financial repercussions of employee turnover. According to a Fall 2012 report shared by CBS News, for all jobs earning less than $50,000 per year, the average cost of replacing an employee amounts to fully 20% of the person’s salary. More than 40% of jobs in the United States fall into this category. One employee’s departure can cause bruising, but if frequent turnover exists in the work environment, it can cause bleeding that can be fatal to the morale of the employees and ultimately, decrease the lifespan of the company.

What will you and your team do to keep that new asset on board? Organizations can provide various perks to their employees. Affordable benefits, time off, and flexible scheduling are ways to help an employee maintain a work-life balance. Establish a consistent time to meet with your new employee to acquire his/her perspectives while you are sincerely listening more than talking. Often, some of the most important observations can be made by viewing nonverbal language in addition to listening to the details of verbal dialogue.

Use Pre-Employment Testing as a Hiring and Retention Tool

Ultimately, an employee wants to feel challenged and appreciated. Challenged? Appreciated? How do I help my new employee, or even my current employees, feel challenged and appreciated you might ask? Excellent question. Having insight into an employee’s cognitive and behavioral skills can help you, as a leader, effectively mentor the new employee during the initial acclimation phase and throughout his/her career with the organization. Current employees can benefit from mentoring, as well, after receiving feedback from 360 degree evaluations and leadership assessments. To acquire this insightful information about your employees, consider using employee assessments. Pre-hire assessments are excellent tools to help leaders identify strengths and potential weaker areas of candidates. These assessments can be used, in conjunction with interviewing and application screening, to help make a hiring decision, and in addition, identify ways for managers to help nurture new employees’ strengths and coach them as they improve or compensate for weaker areas. Assessments can also be given to an existing team to acquire a better understanding of the team’s motivators and help in succession planning and management promotion.

ExactHire offers a comprehensive selection of pre-employment testing tools that can help you and your organization acquire the necessary insight to lead, and not just supervise your team, while planning for a solid future of growth in your organization. These 360 degree evaluations, leadership and workplace team assessments, along with management potential evaluations are just a few types of assessments available to you. These tools can give you, the leader, a solid foundation of knowledge and insight to help you create an empowering relationship with your team.

For more information about employee assessments available from ExactHire, please contact us today.

Image credit: Magnetic Fields-21 by Windell Oskay (contact)