“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first”

Whilst tradition would say that one is lucky to have a job at all - in today’s reality, there is more choice for good candidates, so keeping staff motivated and engaged, as well as rewarded for their efforts, is the key to retaining good staff!

3 simple tips for retention and success in the workforce include:

Flexibility and autonomy

Offering flexibility in the work place can be an effective tool to get more out of your employees.  One would be naive to think that the businesses objectives are the only thing on an employees mind, every day.  Employees have their own personal ambitions, families to take care of, school runs to do, health concerns and a host of other challenges competing for their focus each day.  Offering flexi time arrangements means that an employee can manage both work and personal responsibilities and still get the job done well, within time frames assigned.  Having spoken to many employers who offer a more flexible approach to working hours, they have found that employees are more engaged as a result and ‘return the favour for flexibility’ by giving back more than their fair share in both man hours and output, because they feel trusted and valued, to get the job done.

Training and Support

In the words of Sir Richard Branson, "Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to" - Investing in opportunities for training will enable your employees to develop more valuable, sought after skills and industry expertise; making them a fantastic asset.  Unfortunately, those that are valuable to you are also likely to be extremely valuable to your competitors.  Training and development programmes can be costly and time consuming, so whilst this is a great benefit to offer, everyone can understand why employers want to see a return on the investment, rather than losing an employee to a competitor, before their costs are realised.  Support is therefore a crucial part of the training and development process as well.  When an employee feels supported, they are less likely to be swayed by the opportunity to move on.  Whilst money is high on everyone's agenda, feeling supported, having flexibility in the work place and being part of the story to success, can be far more valuable to most.  This leads me swiftly onto my final point.....

Value and Appreciation

Value becomes visible through what and how a person contributes to a business.  Appreciation is the verb of value.  It's the action that naturally follows when you value someone - you show appreciation.  You should make it known that you appreciate your staff, for the value they add to your business.  In doing this, you will get more from your staff, guaranteed! 

• Listen to everyone's ideas and if possible, adopt an open door policy so that people feel comfortable enough to engage and communicate with senior managers, more frequently.

• Give credit where credit is due - don't wait for annual review, to celebrate success - by the time, it will just fall on deaf ears.

• Have fun - you may be serious about the job at hand, but creating and enabling opportunities for fun within your business, is vital for your team.  Fun makes the stressful moments seem easier to handle.  

• Create a work space where people are happy to spend most of their lives - after all, the average employee spends more time at work, than they do at home.  If possible, make the office space as enticing and open as possible.  Not all companies can offer pool tables, free lunches, adult sized slides or fake grass, but even just having a dedicated break out area, free tea and coffee, fresh fruit etc. is cost effective, but still shows employees that you value their commitment in time, by coming to work every day and doing a good job!

If you are looking for ways to engage with your staff, or benchmark salaries and benefits to ensure that your work force and new employees joining the team, are kept engaged and focussed for the long term, please get in touch.  Our aim is simple - Connecting people in Business - We do this by not only recruiting the right staff for our clients, but also by ensuring that our clients create the right impression overall, when engaging with prospect candidates.