Employee retention needs to be used as a primary measure of the health of your organisation. If you are losing key employees, you can be sure that their colleagues may be looking as well. Exit interviews with departing employees provide valuable information you can use to retain remaining staff. Take note of their results, it’s the most relevant source of data about the health of your organisation.

Here are our top ten tips when looking at retention: 

1. Make training a part of your culture - ­employees can share their knowledge via training sessions, presentations, mentoring others, team building and team assignments.

2. Respect employees - ­listen to them, use their ideas and give praise, never ridicule or shame.

3. Feedback and celebration - offer performance feedback, celebrate good efforts and results.

4. Make work fun - ­allow people to enjoy their work, engage and employ the special talents of each individual.

5. Empower employees to balance work and life - allow flexible starting times, core business hours and flexible ending times.

6. Decisions and direction ­- involve employees in decisions that affect their jobs and the overall direction of the company whenever possible.

7. Recognise and celebrate success - ­show employees you care that important goals are achieved.

8. Keep one eye on the workload - be aware of workloads to minimise the need for working extra hours and so that your people don’t wear themselves out.

9. Cross training and internal progression ­- provide opportunities within the company for cross training and career progression, people like to know that they have room for career movement.

10. Don’t forget yourself - you need to ensure your own well­being and motivation too, as you will be important to your employees as well as your employer.

© Illumine Training 2007 - This top tips fact sheet first appeared in the November 2007 Illuminating Newsletter from Illumine Training.

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Tags: Employee retention, Engagement and Motivation, Motivate

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Engagement and Motivation, Motivate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.