You might be able to attract good staff but can you keep them with you?
Can you help them to stay motivated, stay interested and most importantly, just stay with you? Good management is essential for staff retention. Here are the top ten things you can do to keep hold of your best performers.
1. Communicate
Make sure you regularly communicate with your key staff and tell them what’s going on. Sometimes, that may mean communicating bad news as well as good news. An employee who’s kept in the loop will feel more valued and more involved in the running of the business.
2. Respect
You cannot expect your employees to respect you if you don’t respect them. An employee who does not feel respected and valued will not give their best work and is much more likely to leave.
3. Ask for input
If you don’t ask, you don’t get, or so the saying goes. Ask your employees for their opinions, suggestions and input. People often need to be invited to say what they think so don’t miss a golden opportunity to get feedback just because you haven’t asked for it.
4. Manage properly
Employees leave their manager or boss more often than they leave the job itself. You need to train your managers to manage staff properly. Managers need to:
• Be clear about expectations
• Be clear about earning potential and career options
• Give frequent feedback about performance
• Hold regular meetings with staff and not reschedule them without good reason
• Support staff to allow and encourage them to succeed
5. Recognise potential
Allow your employees to use their full potential. The key to this is understanding employees’ capabilities in the first place but even if you’re not fully aware of exactly what they can do, don’t automatically refuse if they ask to do something that’s not completely within the remit of their own role. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.
6. Give autonomy
Good employees crave autonomy. They want to be trusted to get on with things or to have the opportunity to do things their way. Make sure you are delegating and not just abdicating responsibility!
7. Be fair, be consistent and be nice
There are three basics you need to remember when dealing with staff. Be fair, be consistent and above all, be nice. Your staff need to see that you treat everyone fairly, consistently and nicely, otherwise they will not stay. If they feel that they themselves are the victim of unfair treatment, they can and probably will take an unfair or constructive dismissal claim against you. However, even if they don’t feel that they themselves are being treated badly, they are unlikely to view unfair treatment as acceptable in their employer.
8. Lighten up
Life is serious enough sometimes so allowing and even encouraging your staff to have a laugh can have a huge impact. Enjoying time together and having a laugh will help your team to bond and work better together.
9. Don’t lie
People do not feel secure if they don’t trust what they’re being told. Not lying doesn’t mean being excruciatingly honest at every turn but it does mean that you don’t fabricate stories or twist the truth to suit your own means. Especially in a small company, the truth has a way of getting out and then no one will believe anything they’re told.
10. Say thank you
Take the opportunity to say thank you from time to time. You have to mean it though, don’t just say it because your employees will know the difference. A little bit of appreciation goes a long way.
Conclusion
Most employers worry that their best employees will leave them and go to another company offering more money. However, although the increase in salary can be an important factor, you should always ask yourself what else your employee is hoping to get from their new employer that they aren’t currently getting with you.
Work with us to keep your best staff - get in touch with us now.