Having employees can be expensive. But do you know what’s more costly? Having to replace them. The numbers vary depending on the source, but some say it costs six to nine months of an employee’s salary to recruit, hire, and train them. In other words, if you have an open role paying $80,000 a year, plan to pay around $40,000 to $60,000 to acquire and train a new hire. (Some say it costs more than their annual salary!)

So, keeping employee turnover to a minimum is important for your bottom line.

It’s also good for promoting company culture, improving employee satisfaction, and supporting employee morale.

Read my blog on how to build company culture.

8 Ways to Improve Your Employee Retention Strategy

So, how can you improve employee retention? Here are some of my top tips.

1. Allow Flexible Hours

The pandemic completely changed the way we work, and now, people want more freedom. If you can allow for flexible work schedules, I highly recommend it.

Flexible schedules make it possible for your team members to work when they’re most alert and productive, rest when they need to, and be there for their families.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean letting them work whenever they want. Rather, it’s about leaving a little breathing room for people to have lives. (More on this in a second.)

This is something simple that can go a long way in improving job satisfaction and employee retention.

2. Establish Work-Life Balance

Another side effect of the pandemic? Professionals realized how nice it is to have lives that aren’t dominated by work, work, work.

In addition to flexible hours, can you hold First Friday, where your folks get the first Friday of every month off? Is a remote work environment an option, even if only a couple of days a week? How about No-Meeting Wednesdays? These days, employees feel pressured to reply to emails and messages after hours — is there anything you can do to remedy this?

Establishing a healthy work-life balance should be a core component of your employee retention strategy.

3. Provide Wellness Offerings

If you want to improve employee job satisfaction and thus, employee retention, then you have to care about your team members’ overall well-being.

Wellness offerings can include discounts on gym memberships, classes, and mental health therapy.

This partly goes along with finding work-life balance. Ask yourself: “How can I improve my workers’ well-being so that they’ll want to stick around?”

4. Offer Competitive Pay

You don’t need me to tell you what the economy is like right now. An inadequate salary is a common reason why employees leave. Competitive compensation is an absolute must.

This is especially vital because these days, some positions are asking a lot of professionals. For example, many marketing roles are much more all-encompassing than they used to be. Employers want professionals who can do social media, and email marketing, and graphic design. That’s three jobs, which means the pay should reflect it.

“The company can’t afford that!” you might be saying. Then get creative! Business leaders can also offer retirement plans, a recognition program, great health insurance, more PTO, job security, bonuses, and additional perks (like wellness offerings).

5. Create Personal Development Opportunities

If employers want to decrease employee turnover, then they need to stop looking at professionals as machines and start considering their career trajectories more holistically.

Can you offer mentorship opportunities to professionals who want to climb the ladder? What about promotions that make room for career advancement?

Contribute to their futures with more compelling job opportunities, and they’ll be more motivated in the present.

Read my blog on mentoring leaders in your organization.

6. Have an Efficient and Engaging Onboarding Process

Your retention strategy starts the moment an employee clocks in on their first day. In fact, it starts during the recruitment process.

New hires often drink from the proverbial firehose. Training can be overwhelming and also — let’s be honest — boring. New employees might have tons of questions but not know who to go to. In particular, if this is remote work, it can feel isolating.

Make sure your human resource management is top-notch. Create bulletproof standard operating procedures that new hires can easily follow. Encourage top talent and employees who have been there a while to support the new folks.

Help new hires get started on the right foot.

7. Promote a Positive Work Environment

This is something we don’t talk about enough but it’s a must for retaining employees.

Start at the top with your business leaders and managers. I find this helpful because many employees don’t leave their jobs — they leave their managers. Do team members feel taken care of, supported, and heard by the people they report to?

Then, consider negative behaviors that can turn a great team toxic, like gossiping and complaining without offering solutions.

Discouraging things like gossiping and complaining doesn’t often make it into employee retention strategies, but it should. This improves employee engagement, happiness, and ultimately, employee retention.

8. Take Exit Interviews Seriously

Even companies with the best employee retention strategies will see team members come and go. The exit interview is vital.

Can you find patterns in the reasons why employees leave? Is the company culture lacking? Was there no room for professional development? Was the work environment toxic?

Look for the common denominators. If you don’t address them, you’ll never be able to retain employees.

The Key: Employee Job Satisfaction

Attracting talent is only part of the equation. If you want to retain great employees, ask yourself these questions:

• How can I keep employees motivated?
• Why do employees leave?
• I have a departing employee — what can I learn from them?
• Does my existing team have feedback for me?

Employee retention is as important as — and possibly more important than — increasing your sales! An organization’s ability to keep employees happy, improve the company’s culture, and improve talent retention is vital to its survival. Hone a comprehensive employee retention program and watch your company flourish.