Employee Retention: 8 Strategies for Retaining Top Talent

Talented employees are everywhere, and the beautiful thing about living in a digital era is that you can reach them no matter where they are. Whether you’re managing in-house team members or a remote workforce, or a mix of the two, you probably know by now that retaining that talent over the long term should be your top priority. Why?

Well, for one, talent retention is much more cost-effective than talent acquisition, but money is just one piece of the puzzle. Investing in employee engagement, empowerment, and happiness builds a powerful workplace culture and an employee collective with a single goal. That goal is to drive your business forward, which is something that you can’t hope to achieve with high employee turnover.

Now, let’s put everything into perspective and help you keep the best employees at your side throughout 2022 and beyond. Here’s what you need to do.

1. Engage Employees Through One-On-One Meetings

Nobody likes a meeting that could have clearly been an email. But that doesn’t mean that employees don’t want a little more one-on-one time with the higher-ups. Too many companies spend too much time on group meetings when they should be looking at the employee engagement statistics and figuring out ways to better engage their team members.

One of these is to spend more time in face-to-face conversations, asking meaningful one-on-one questions and focusing on the individual. Understand that the last two years have been very stressful on your team members and have impacted the way your employees feel on a daily basis. 

Now’s the time for good leadership to kick in and for you to engage your employees in a meaningful conversation online or in person. Take a genuine interest in their wellbeing, talk about their goals and aspirations, and remind them that the company has got their back. 

2. Identify the Top Performer in Every Team

There is a top performer in every department and every team in your business. Identifying who these people are is crucial when you’re developing your employee retention strategies, as you can use them to take your other team members forward. 

You can find the top-performing individuals in every team through your performance management solution and when you do, you need to leverage their talent and expertise. This is your opportunity to assign new team leads, start grooming a top performer for a higher position, and focus on their professional development.

This process will also help you uncover the hidden talent in your teams, allowing you to retain employees over the long term.

3. Make Remote Work Seamless and Effective

Remote work has become the norm nowadays, and it’s not just the pandemic that has driven companies to adopt this model. As collaboration and communication tech becomes more advanced and accessible, it’s only natural for business leaders to start cutting costs and financial waste by letting their employees work remotely. 

The problem is that many make the common remote working mistakes that create communication bottlenecks and hinder performance.

Whether you’re working with flexi-commuters or digital nomads scattered across the globe, you need to:

• Set up a clear communication hierarchy.

• Provide robust communication and collaboration tools.

• Manage expectations meticulously for every team and employee.

• Ensure accountability through an employee management solution.

• Nurture a positive workplace culture in the digital space.

• Ensure top-down visibility and real-time project tracking for all participants.

Remember that remote employees often suffer from a lack of visibility. You need to keep communication channels open, encourage feedback and reporting, and use a PM tool that allows everyone to stay informed.

4. Boost Your Work Environment with Objectives and Key Results (OKR)

You heard of KPIs and metrics, but have you heard about the objectives and key results model? An OKR is, simply put, a very specific goal or objective that is supported by three to five key results. Objectives and key results allow an organization to achieve tangible and very specific results, and in the case of talent retention, it can mean focusing on company culture, employee recognition, job satisfaction, and much more.

You can have organizational, team, and individual OKRs. You can use them to reduce employee turnover (organizational), increase employee experience (team OKR), and boost professional development (individual OKR). The possibilities are endless, so give this model a go for better talent retention in 2022.

5.  Create an Inspirational and Engaging Employer Brand

It’s important to understand that millennial and Gen Z workers are not just in it for the money. Yes, money is a big factor, but if you want to retain employees, especially the top talent, you need to think beyond financial compensation.

For one, if your employees feel like they’re stuck in a dead-end job or if they don’t feel like a part of your brand, you can expect to lose them. That’s why it’s so important to build corporate presentations and brand values along with a workplace culture that defines a powerful employer brand. This will be good for your onboarding process as well as re-engaging with veteran employees.

A big part of your employer brand should be to help your employees grow by offering robust advancement programs as well. Workshops, seminars, education, and training, all of this should help the individual feel recognized and respected, but also to prepare them for bigger and better things down the road. 

6. Increase Job Satisfaction with the Right Tools

When stress levels get high in the workplace, job satisfaction starts to dip and employee turnover starts to rise. This should come as no surprise, as the best employees can easily find a better company culture and work environment elsewhere, so why should they stick around?

One of the biggest drivers of stress in the workplace (especially remotely) is not having access to the right tools. Your sales experts can’t generate qualified leads without the right email finder tools  or LinkedIn scraper  and your marketers certainly can’t nurture them without a robust CRM. And what about project collaboration and communication?

Your remote and in-house team members need the right tools to collaborate and exchange information in real-time, and they need department-specific tools to make their jobs easier and more efficient. This is how you’ll raise job satisfaction.

7. Build a Thriving Workplace Culture

Without a doubt, company culture is essential for your long-term success, and especially if you’re looking to retain employees. To build a thriving culture that will engage your employees and elevate happiness in the workplace, you need to set the right pillars.

The pillars of a positive workplace culture include:

• Honesty

• Transparency

• Equality

• Trust

• Co-dependence

• Collaboration

• Accountability

Focus on building up these pillars to create a strong employee collective and keep the best of the best at your side.

8. Create an Inspirational Onboarding Process

Finally, keep in mind that every new employee has the potential to become a top performer - but only with your continued support and guidance. Your job is to welcome and onboard new employees effectively in order to empower them but also bring their talents to light.

You can do this by familiarizing them with your brand’s values, personalizing their welcome package, and even by pairing them with a veteran employee. That said, you as the leader will need to show genuine interest in the newcomer as well in order to show them that they are a valued member of the team.

Make sure to incorporate the pillars of your company culture into the onboarding process from the very start to instill the right values in your new employees.

Wrapping Up

Nowadays, employee retention rates depend on a variety of factors, including company culture, overall job satisfaction, your work environment, and more. As a good business leader, you also need to help your employees feel more at ease with proper guidance and one-on-one calls, but also by giving them the right tools for the job.

Make sure to use these strategies to inspire your most talented people to stay at your side through thick and thin, and to turn newcomers into brand advocates quickly.

Author Bio: This article is written by our marketing team at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!