7 ways to improve employee retention
By: Martyna Karpiuk
Tags: Human Resources, Employer Branding, Retention, Employee, Ebnavi

Having a strong employer brand not only helps you attract the right candidates, it is also proven to decrease employee turnover up to 26% (Gallup 2014) and retain your top quality talents.

But what does it mean to have a strong employer brand? Employer Branding Institute has quantified this complex matter and revealed the most crucial processes and metrics that define it and construct it.

What are the most important processes and areas to take care of in order to improve your employee retention?

1. Take care of the organisational culture

Organisational culture is a complex topic, very challenging to define. By Business Dictionary definition it means:

the values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation

How unique is your organisation? How well and happy do your employees feel when they come to work? It is actually more elaborate than it seems. The best way to identify the culture’s essential elements and to improve them is conducting a research, simply, ask your employees what are the most important and positive elements that make them feel happy at work.

2. Ensure a decent salary

There’s no deep philosophy behind it, the research proves remuneration is the factor that has not changed over the years. You simply need to pay your employees right. Keep it near the market standards, or slightly above.

Incentivise the loyal and most engaged employees and create the transparent and fair system for everyone in the company.

3. Choose the right benefits

Benefits package has become one of the main elements of the employers’ offer that wins the employees, and it develop so much that the candidates and employees in fact started to expect it. Moreover, it brings factual results, as the employees appreciate the comfortable and modern office, quality medical care, co-financing their interests, passions and development, and many others. Don’t be afraid to be creative about it, maybe you can surprise your employees?

Don’t forget to involve emotions. The more personal will your benefits be, the more memorable and appreciated by your people. Why not to reward the top performers of the month with e. g. a lunch with the CEO?

4. Embrace the well-being culture

Improving well-being culture of your organisation is the best way to show them that you as an employer care about them. Employee well-being might include several areas, such as health, physical, mental, spiritual or even financial well-being.

Start from the internal research what’s the most important for your current employees and respond their particular needs.

5. Make your people grow

In times of the rapidly changing business world, the constant skillset improvement, training, professional and personal development are a must. It can benefit your employees individually and as a consequence the entire company.

You can use the existing sources of online courses, or motivate your own employees to become trainers, by skill sharing you strengthen the team spirit and integration between team members.

It is also a good employer branding practice to start right in the onboarding, to spark the employee motivation from the very beginning.

6. Stay flexible

The reports on the Millennials generation show that flexibility is one of the most valued factors in terms of employee satisfaction, and retention in the same time. The meaning of work-life balance is growing, and flexibility at work can make your employees stay longer with your organisation.

Keep the system suitable to your employees’ needs, conduct a research among your people what they need most, e. g. young people will appreciate extra holidays, parents will appreciate flexible working hours in order to adjust their daily schedule to the family’s lifestyle.

Also in terms of the form of employment, the growing trend is remote workforce. Do you have an excellent developer of a graphic designer who you don’t want to lose, yet they dream of working from Bali? Why not to allow them doing this?

7. Use the power of Gamification

The last, but not least. Gamification is using the game elements in non game environment, such as employer branding. For example? Scoring points, recognition, goals, perks, accomplishment or teamwork.

As a result it improves the elements of the organisational culture, makes people more engaged in their duties and as a consequence — stay longer. It can both improve the team spirit and introduce the sense of healthy competition at work.

“What gets measured, gets managed.” – Peter Drucker

How strong is your employer brand? Are you a star or a celebrity among the employers? Audit your brand and check today with EBnavi.com