Why is staff retention so important?
1. You have invested heavily in developing your employee's knowledge, experience and skills, and you don't want to lose your best employees to a rival employer who can benefit from your investment.
2. There are significant direct and indirect costs associated with staff turnover, which may include; advertising costs, agency fees, travel, HR and Manager time, work that gets put on hold, overloading of other staff members (who may in turn become, de-motivated, stressed or sick), a period of initial low staff productivity with new starters, potential lost customers/contacts, and potential loss of other employees.
3. Motivated employees are hard-working employees; they will come up with new ideas, go the extra mile, and they are your biggest asset for helping your business through the good and the bad times.
What makes employees stay?
Recognition: We all appreciate it when someone says thank you, or tells us we did an excellent job on something, and often this is all the reward we need when we've worked hard on a project. Employers who recognise the efforts of their staff will be rewarded in return with harder-working, more motivated employees.
Flexibility: Employees appreciate it when their employer recognises that although work is very important, it isn't everything! We all live in the real world with family, dependents, and friends, outside interests, hobbies, and personal chores competing with our work for attention. Employers who recognise this and who promote a flexible working environment will be rewarded with happier, less stressed, well-rounded staff.
Community: Building a sense of belonging creates better communication between colleagues, improved team-work, promotes initiative and ideas sharing, and helps to create a happy and healthy atmosphere. Happy employees who feel 'at home' will reward their employer with commitment, loyalty, and dedication to the team.
Culture: The culture of a workplace is one of the most important aspects, but it can also be the hardest thing to define, and the most difficult thing to change. The culture you try to create should be relevant to your staff profile: a company with a younger staff might be motivated by a 'fun' culture at work, plenty of social occasions, and somewhere that encourages free-thinking, while an older staff might prefer a culture where flexible working patterns are promoted, very long working hours are not regarded as the 'norm' and social occasions are 'family-friendly'.
Compensation: There isn't a person on the planet who wouldn't like a bit extra in their pay-packet - except for Ronaldo maybe! However, employee compensation isn't only about salary - additional training, tuition fees, performance-related bonuses, and some of the following perks, rewards and little lifts can add to an employee's salary by way of a reward.
Perks, rewards, and little lifts!
We all love it when someone shows us that they care about our wellbeing and development, and this applies to our managers and colleagues as much as to our friends and family. Equally, we all love the excitement of a perk or freebie!
So, a combination of perks and longer-term, more 'strategic', examples of employee reward can result in happy, motivated employees, who experience a little lift every now and then. Not all of these have to be expensive, some are free, and some may even help you to make savings - for example, allowing some staff to switch to part-time work could actually help to relieve pressures on staff costs.
Flexible working:
- flexi-time
- part-time working
- compressed working weeks
- term-time working
- job-sharing
- encouraging a culture that doesn't promote working after 6.00pm
- nearby or onsite childcare
Career development opportunities:
- training courses
- tuition fees
- study & exam leave
- sculpting roles to suit employees interests
- empowering staff through delegation
- holding career development seminars
- sessions with independent career counsellors
Building a sense of community & wellbeing:
- monthly or quarterly social activities
- health & wellbeing checks
- nutrition advice
- health insurance
- fruit deliveries
- sports clubs/teams
- gym membership or onsite facilities
- charity days or monthly charity shop collections
Creative compensation:
Perks based on your own expertise e.g.
- free personal finance health-checks
- mortgage assistance
- tax advice
Little Lifts:
- remember to say 'thank you'!
- a bunch of flowers
- a box of chocolates
- a team lunch
- hold team-building away days
- cinema/theatre tickets
- book clubs
- craft clubs
- a 'Crunchie' on a Friday afternoon
- an extra day off at Christmas & Easter
- dress-down Friday
We all want to be valued, appreciated and thanked for our efforts, and the more we feel like we're part of an organisation that values it's staff, the more motivated we are to reward our employers with initiative, loyalty and hard work.
Dee Connolly
CPD Department
Chartered Accountants Ireland
The 'Retaining Valued Employees' eCPD course is available from the Chartered Accountants Ireland website, along with over 50 additional eCPD courses in a range of topic areas. For more information please visit www.charteredaccountants.ie/cpd