Why Employee Retention Is So Important
Employee retention is increasingly important in a world more focused on company culture than ever. Gone are the days when a company could burn blithely through a crop of employees, confident that there was always someone hungrier out there waiting to replace anyone that was cut loose. The hunger hasn’t gone anywhere, but smart companies have learned to operate more like families and less like prison farms: having a strong set of employees that can grow with the company is an invaluable resource. Job seekers now have resources like Comparably to get a sense of employee satisfaction. And in a nuts-and-bolts sense, high employee turnover can play havoc with a company’s bottom line. Here are some ways in which employee retention can affect a business in the modern landscape.
1) Employees that can grow with a company are a bedrock for future success. – The more people working for your company that really care about their jobs beyond compensation and benefits, the stronger the company is. It’s simple human nature that most of us want a home base, and that means a job that feels like a place where we belong. Most of us don’t want to bounce from job-to-job if we can help it. So don’t allow conditions for your employees to degrade to the point that they’re wiling to venture out into a less sure future to get away from whatever is bothering them at their current job.
2) Company culture is on everyone’s mind now. – It’s not just the pay, the prestige or the opportunity for advancement anymore. The way a company is thought to treat its employees has become an enormous element of the discourse, and something no business can afford to ignore. Employees have public forums like Comparably now to let it be known just how well they’re treated at work, how they rate their employers’ vision, and how much they like their jobs. Expect talent to be increasingly picky about where they settle in to work from now on.
Six Ways To Improve Work Meetings
3) Too much turnover costs too much money. – It costs a lot to lose an employee and refill that position. It can cost as much as 33% of an employee’s yearly salary to replace them, often over preventable causes, and that’s not taking into account the costs associated with a dip in productivity and the time it takes to get a new employee up to speed.
4) Customers notice when favored employees they’ve dealt with have been replaced. – Customers also like feeling the comforts of recognition when they engage into transactions with the businesses they choose to frequent. They’ll know if their favorite point person is no longer with the company, and chances are they’ll hold it against you. Customers use their favorite employees as a way to humanize their interactions, and their lost connection with a friendly voice that has departed is a loss for your company.
5) It is essential for morale. – When workers note their coworkers are leaving for opportunities elsewhere, it can cause them to question their own job security whether they have reason to or not. A lot of things go into employee morale, and much of it has to do with career growth and work goals. But high turnover gets even the veteran employees nervous: nobody likes to feel like they’re missing out on something better happening somewhere else.
6) Good employees take their brains – and their ideas – with them. – They may be feeling lost in the shuffle or underappreciated, but they were hired for good qualities that are following them out the door. Better to find a way to re-stoke their productivity and enthusiasm for the company before they look for employment elsewhere and potentially give all those currently-dormant good ideas to someone else.
