It’s no secret that good help is hard to find. When you have the right talent working for your business, you want them to stay. The trouble is, many companies forget about these critical assets and how they play a pivotal role in their growth. So how do you retain them? Invest in your staff.
You’re likely reading this today because you want to invest in your employees and don’t want your team tempted by your competitors. With that in mind, check out these actionable ways to invest in your staff and keep them happy and productive in your business:
The first thing you need to do is keep in mind that money isn’t everything when attracting and retaining top talent for your business. Sure, having an excellent salary means that your employees don’t have to worry about their personal finances.
But, you should also know that people get attracted to working for specific companies for several reasons. Those reasons include the company culture, working environment, and benefits.
You don’t want a workforce that’s afraid of airing any grievances with you for fear of losing their jobs. You must foster a working environment where all team members feel they can talk to you about any aspect of their employment or daily work.
A boss that blatantly doesn’t care about its workers will inevitably have a high staff turnover. Don’t be an employer that your staff hate. Be someone that treats their team members as an extension of their own family.
You might think to yourself that annual employee reviews will cover this topic. However, the reality is workers at some companies don’t even get a yearly review. And some of those that do aren’t given an opportunity to discuss their daily workload.
Consider offering bi-yearly performance reviews at a minimum. Doing so will enable you to see whether you need to hire extra team members for better workload distribution. After all: you don’t want your team to ‘burn out’ because they’ve got so much work to do each day.
The one thing that your employees can all benefit from is learning new skills. It makes sense to offer your team opportunities to learn new skills and gain certifications or qualifications at the end of their learning journeys.
There are many ways you can achieve that goal. Here are some examples that you can consider:
Some employers allow their staff to spend some time away from work each week and get vocational training from external educational establishments.
It’s a great way to keep employees engaged and aligned with your business goals as they can learn more about other aspects and operations of your company. Plus, it gives them an occasional change of scenery - useful if they are office-based workers.
There are many courses that your team can complete at their leisure through online learning. It’s a very flexible approach to education because they can fit in their learning whenever they have spare time, and there’s no fixed schedule that can cause undue stress.
You can implement online learning using LMS software or have employees using third-party learning environment portals.
Do you have some employees that would like to move into a different department within your firm? You could encourage a learning process where they get ‘on the job training’ for the role they would like.
It gives you both a chance to see how well suited they are and decreases the likelihood of working in a similar role at another company.
Some of your team will undoubtedly need to juggle their daily commitments around their work. Why not make their lives easier (and your company more productive) by offering flexible working? For example, some workers might prefer to start and leave work late.
Others might prefer to work mostly from home and visit the office once or twice a week. There are many ways that you can provide flexible working options to your team. It makes sense to discuss them with each employee.
Gone are the days where all workers in an office had to wear formal attire, and the mere thought of personalizing a desk would result in a reprimand from your superiors! These days, people want to enjoy their work and feel comfortable with how they work.
Some business purists might say that working shouldn’t be fun. But, such outdated views no longer have a place in today’s modern business world. So, how can you make your team’s working environment fun?
One idea to invest in your staff might be to redecorate internal offices in a modern, inspiring style, and fits in with your business’s ideals. Some examples could include:
It’s never a great sign when you start a new job, and no-one has a clue what they’re meant to do with you. In those situations, you feel anything but valuable or useful to your new employer.
You must avoid situations like that whenever you hire new team members. That’s why it makes sense to have an onboarding plan so you can quickly integrate those people into your team.
Lastly, it’s crucial to recognize the achievements that your team make in their work. People don’t need to get told they’re fantastic daily. But, they would like recognition for specific notable achievements - especially ones that help the business grow or save money.
You might think that your team only wants to be told they’ve done a great job when they’ve done some amazing. That’s partly true, but it’s more likely they want to know you’ve seen and noted their contributions. This can be a key way to invest in your staff.
