One of the best ways to ensure success for your business is to have a settled team of employees. The thing is, with so much choice available in the labour market, it's often difficult to retain your best staff, as their knowledge and interpersonal skills are sought after by other companies. However, as we'll find out during this article, keeping hold of your staff requires focus.
Why Is It Good To Have A High Retention Rate Of Staff?
To begin with, it costs much less to keep hold of staff than to attract and recruit new ones that leave. In higher-paying jobs, it can cost you as much as 20% of that person's salary - just to replace them, so we're talking about thousands of dollars. That's before we even start talking about the lost expertise, productivity and personal development they may need to get to the required level.
How Do You Improve Staff Retention?
It's all about providing team member satisfaction and ensuring that your staff feel lucky to have their current job. As we'll discover through this blog, there are a number of ways that this can be achieved. So, let's waste no time getting started.
- Method #1 - Onboarding - Start As You Mean to Go On
It's vital that you make your staff feel welcomed and valued from the moment they join your roster. As such, your onboarding plan should be geared toward creating the required atmosphere. There are a number of free templates you can download and follow to begin with, but there will be elements that are specific to you and your company ethos.
This should include an introduction to company rules, expectations and the various types of support they might need as new starters. Some companies even opt to start the process remotely via online learning so that they're ready when they arrive.
However it's done, your employees should experience a smooth start to life in their new role and be fully aware of all the available resources. It's such an essential phase of the process, mainly as it can set the tone for their entire time with you.
- Method #2 - Introduce an Employee Mentor Program
Another great way to promote loyalty among your workforce is to introduce mentorship programs that help to guide staff as they develop. Typically started as part of the onboarding process, it involves pairing up new starters with someone with experience and know-how. Not only does this help the new starter, but it can be incorporated into the personal development plans of more senior team members.
New employees also bring with them fresh viewpoints, so everyone wins. There is no downside to mentor programs when run correctly, as everyone involved gets to contribute. As we mentioned earlier, job satisfaction is key to employees hanging around, and there's nothing more likely to make a person feel valued than this kind of nurturing of talent.
- Method #3 - Provide an Employee Wellness Program
If you want your employees to be happy in their work, a great way to improve the chances of that being the case is to provide employee wellness perks. This can take many forms, but it's typically a program that's set up to make it easier for your staff to live healthier lives. How you create yours is up to you, but they will usually include a mixture of the following:
- In-person & online exercise classes
- Dietary workshops that offer healthy eating knowledge
- Provision of free fruit bowls in the office
- Pre/post-natal classes
- Meditation periods
Wellness programs are also proven to boost productivity by as much as 66%, so the company absolutely benefits from a focused, engaged and happy workforce.
By providing a smooth onboarding process, ongoing mentoring and wellness perks, you can foster a company reputation of supporting your employees - something else that will help to make people think twice about leaving your organisation for new pastures.
Manage Staff More Effectively With OCA Short Courses Online
Nobody said that being a manager was easy, but when engaging with CPD-endorsed, video-based short courses online like our Managing Staff Course, the job can get a whole lot easier. Offering super-relevant content that's created with top industry experts, our online learning represents a next-level experience that actively encourages further learning.
As you can see by watching our Student Study Demo, with OCA you're really well supported with 24/7 tutorial assistance and 1-to-1 mentoring. It's not by accident that ours are considered to be the best online courses Australia can offer to ambitious professionals. Our courses are modular too, meaning that you can fit your learning around your day with ease.
To find out more about our comprehensive course library that contains training in over 20 different industries, visit us today at www.onlinecoursesaustralia.edu.au. There you'll also discover our flexible payment options that make our cheap courses even more affordable and accessible.
To speak to a member of our friendly team about your specific learning needs, call 1300 611 404. Alternatively, email your inquiry to [email protected], and we’ll respond as quickly as we possibly can.
