Employee Retention

WorkBuzz helps employers and HR Managers gather real-time feedback from staff to find solutions that can improve employee retention and boost productivity.

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What is employee retention?

The term employee retention refers to the level at which a business or other organisation is able to retain its employees in the workplace. In other words, every time someone leaves the employment of a business for whatever reason, this will affect the company’s employee retention rate. Most businesses, government departments and charities want to retain as many of their current workforce as possible because there are costs associated with replacing them. These are often down to the expenditure required to recruit a replacement as well as the training costs that might be involved when a new member of staff is taken on.

What are the challenges associated with employee retention?

Why is employee retention important?

What are the benefits of employee retention?

How can WorkBuzz help employers retain their employees?

Find out how WorkBuzz can help 

What are the challenges associated with employee retention?

 

Employee retention rates of 100 per cent, or even approaching it, are not truly feasible in any commercial setting. As a workforces ages, so people of retirement age will leave. Equally, some people will depart from an organisation for entirely personal reasons that employers can do little about. There again, some people will inevitably get sick and no longer remain on the payroll of a business. These are all factors that organisations – especially those with larger workforces – have to face.

 

However, what businesses can do something about is the people who are leaving for other sorts of reasons. In short, employees who leave for career advancement opportunities elsewhere and those who find better paid or more interesting work within other organisations detract unnecessarily from employee retention rates. Even worse, members of staff who feel fed up, under-valued or stressed out in their jobs could be retained if their employers took the necessary steps to retain them. As such, improving employee retention says a lot about an employer’s commitment to its workforce and its determination to improve its bottom line.

As mentioned, no business can reasonably expect to retain all of its staff all of the time. Those with an older workforce will sometimes find it particularly challenging to retain employees when they get to retirement age, for example. In addition, you might face competition for workers in your sector, especially when there are certain skills that are in demand. Skilled employees are often the hardest to retain because competitor businesses frequently try to recruit them even though they might be perfectly content working for you.

 

Another aspect of employee retention that is challenging comes down to career pathways. Very often people who would like to advance their career within an organisation can feel let down if they are passed over for promotion more than once. If they are supported or mentored, then such problems can be overcome. If not, more likely than not, the employees concerned will start to look for career advancement opportunities elsewhere. However, one of the biggest challenges in any organisation is that it cannot promote everyone it employs. As such, internal routes to career progression need to be properly signposted to avoid excessive staff turnover in this area.

Why is employee retention important?

 

Virtually every human resources professional will understand that it is often easier and cheaper to retain an employee on the payroll than to recruit their replacement. Not only does advertising for a post cost but there may be recruitment consultant fees to settle, increased wages to pay plus the time and effort it takes to assess and interview suitable candidates. In short, businesses with a high level of staff turnover will often face more overheads with recruitment than firms with good employee retention rates.

 

Another important aspect of employee retention is connected to productivity. Simply put, taking on new employees to replace those who have departed means certain training and onboarding processes may be needed. That’s time that could be spent getting on with the job had the previous person in the post been retained. There again, businesses with high turnover rates will inevitably gain a negative reputation within their industry. Employers that are considered good places to work, on the other hand, tend to have high employee retention rates. If so, it is something that they can use to promote their brand and their attractiveness among any potential new recruits.

 

What are the benefits of employee retention?

When you run an organisation with high rates of employee retention, you will see many of the in-house skills that your employees and teams have built up being retained. Sometimes, there are personal contacts that your customer service teams, sales executives and marketing professionals have that make your business function on a day-to-day basis. If they were to leave, there would be inevitable disruption until your usual processes could be re-established. As such, employee retention helps to boost both productivity and smooth-running operations.

As mentioned, high staff turnover rates also lead to needless business expenditure on recruitment and training. However, there is more to say about the advantages of employee retention. Those organisations which do well in this area will often do so because their current employees are happier, feel more motivated and are less stressed than they are in competitor businesses. In short, if you are getting your employee retention strategy right, it is highly likely you are also doing well in several other aspects of employee wellbeing.

 

How can WorkBuzz help employers retain their employees?

The WorkBuzz employee experience platform is the ideal tool for any business that wants to improve its current rates of employee retention. By asking your employees what they really think and feel about working for you, it is much more straightforward to make decisions about what to do next. All businesses can take steps to improve their employee retention but which are the right ones in your set of circumstances? Essentially, the data that our platform provides allows you to gain real-time insights into what your employees want and, therefore, which would be the most effective measures to take.

 

The key to the way our surveys work is that they are anonymous. When you ask employees about whether they are considering leaving and the reasons there might be for such a move, they are not always likely to provide an honest answer. However, when they are given the chance to feedback with anonymity, they will take the chance to be more genuine. In turn, this allows decision-makers to get the information they need to make informed choices about their employee retention strategy.

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