Keeping Employees Working For You

Sometimes you have an employee that is just not showing as much promise as they did during their interview and you have to let them go. While unpleasant, this is a necessary part of the job to keep the company streamlined. On the other hand, you don’t want the people who are exceeding expectations to leave because they’re unhappy, which would be the opposite of streamlining. So what do you do to keep them happy?

There was a study done that shows that even more so than money and benefits employees are more likely to stay on if they find joy and purpose in their work. Unfortunately, these are things you can’t manufacture or accomplish without completely changing the company so the most you can do is improve work conditions as well as perks and benefits.

By making the office a home away from home for your employees you are far more likely to retain your top guns. No one likes to be miserable and that usually leads to finding new work in the employment game, and if someone is truly unhappy that annual 3% raise isn’t going to cut it. You can take steps to improving workspace quality within the office with little things such as a snack machine, a recreation room (if you can afford it), and just doing what you can to make it a laid back environment.

Even more important is to make the employees feel like they aren’t shackled to anything. Cut back on restraints, such as blocking internet or policing lunch breaks; the more someone is being watched the less they feel like they’re at home. Making employees feel like they aren’t being babysat is the easiest way to increase employee retention.

Now if you think the most important part of employee retention is keeping the best workers then you’d be wrong. While you need to keep the few key players to stay with you, you need the middle of the pack to stick around, too. That’s why when turnover season comes around make sure you have benefits and regulations in place that will benefit all employees to some extent.

The moral here? If you want to increase employee retention you have to reach out to your middle workers as much as the higher performance employees because while your top dogs might be the idea makers, there is nothing they can do if there’s no one there to execute their plans.

How do you keep employees working for you? Be sure to comment below.

IMAGE: Courtesy of Flickr by CarbonNYC