How to Retain Top Talent?

Two out of three millennials think they’ll leave their current employer by 2020. Regarding employee retention, this is a significant problem. If their primary needs aren’t met, they’ll walk out of the door.

As an HR consulting firm with years of experience, we’ve learned some of the main points that influence employee retention in modern organizations, and tackle your staff’s key needs:

Loyalty and Stability

Millennials are constantly accused of job hopping, with the average millennial holding 2.29 jobs in the past 5 years. But, 89% of this generation would happily stay with their employer for 10 or more years if just two of the following criteria were met:

• Opportunities for upward career mobility (aka growth)
• Regular increase in compensation

People aren’t going to stay at the same company if they don’t get rewarded for their loyalty with more opportunities to advance their career and move up the ladder in an organization – along with a regular salary increase.

In essence, employee retention is easier when you invest in your employees. Give them the added stability of career growth and a growing salary, and this inspires loyalty in them. Invest in them, and they’ll invest in you.

Company Vision & Their Purpose

Only 40% of millennials feel connected to their employer’s mission. A sizeable 67% feel more engaged at work when they “strongly agree” that their company’s mission makes them feel like their job is important.

As an employer, you can help things by:

• Bringing clarity to all the roles and responsibilities in your company, giving people a purpose for their work.
• Explain the “why” behind projects and tasks, so your employees know why they’re being asked to do things and can connect with them.
• Promote the company’s mission & values. This helps create a stronger connection between employees and your business, which means they’re more likely to stick around for the long-term.

A big part of retaining top talent is aligning your employees with the company vision and giving them a clear purpose while they work.

Positive Social Atmosphere

If you create happiness in the workspace, it creates meaningful connections between coworkers.

There are a few ways to can promote this positive social atmosphere:

• Create a ‘warm’ and open workspace where people can move around and talk to one another.
• Encourage a casual dress code, which makes work feel like more of a social thing.
• Create opportunities for interaction, ensuring your team work together and build a bond. We actually run loads of team building exercises that can help you do just that!

89% of millennials want to work in social workplaces. So, if you focus on this, then employee retention increases as they’re happy at work and enjoy coming in every day.

Ongoing Training

60% of millennials want to learn and grow on the job, and 79% want their boss to serve as more of a mentor to them. If you don’t provide this ongoing training, then your employees are highly likely to leave.

Take action by:

• Creating more tech-friendly and interactive training methods that can quickly be done on the job. Watching a short webinar before lunch is a perfect example; it’s effortless, and they learn a lot.
• Training your managers to become mentors to your employees. Our HR consulting firm actually offers mentor training for executive managers.

Frequent Feedback

Feedback is a top priority for many millennials. 74% don’t feel like they’re getting enough feedback, which makes them feel ‘in the dark’ about their performance.

You need to keep the satisfaction levels high if you’re serious about retaining top talent. So, try these steps:

• Get your managers to check-in regularly. It doesn’t need to be super formal, just touch base with them and ask how they’re doing.
• Be open about how you measure success and foster an environment that rewards hard work.

A Health-Conscious Workplace & Comprehensive Benefits Package

The modern worker doesn’t want a job that disrupts their daily healthy habits. They don’t want to feel chained to a desk from 9-5 every day. Similarly, the benefits package matters as 35% will turn down a job because they’re not happy with the insurance offerings.

What can you do about this? Well, start by:

• Offering health benefits from day 1 and giving them a choice in their benefits packages.
• Emphasize wellness with group workouts, adding a gym to your office building, providing standing desks, setting up weekly fitness challenges, etc.

If your workplace becomes more health-conscious, then retaining top talent isn’t as difficult.

Retirement Investment Options

Millennials start making retirement contributions at 24. As such, you need to offer some good retirement investment options as part of your benefits package. This helps retain your top talent by giving them something very valuable.

Take these steps to do that:

• Hire an excellent TPA and advisor, it’s not a huge investment, and they can meet employees and find out their primary needs.
• Consider default enrollment where they’re automatically enrolled in the plan unless they opt out.
• Offer more options, allowing them to choose a retirement option that suits them best.

Work/Life Balance

The majority of workers feel more productive in a flexible working environment. They will likely stay with a company if there’s an emphasis on the work/life balance. Otherwise, employees feel overworked and undervalued.

You can improve employee retention by merely addressing the work/life balance in the following ways:

• Provide more flexible working arrangements when possible – maybe give them one day per week where they work from home, or introduce staggered starts?
• Focus on how much work they accomplish in the day, as opposed to how many hours they worked.

Family-Friendly Policies

A massive 83% of millennials would happily leave their job for one with better family/lifestyle benefits. This is one of the easiest ways to improve employee retention as you just need to provide some more family-friendly policies.

Here are a few ideas outside of the typical maternity leave offering:

• Paternity Leave
• Adoption Leave
• Foster Care Leave
• Time off for Doctor Visits and School Events

Student Loan Repayment

The majority of the current workforce went to college and got a degree. As a consequence, they’re struggling with student debt and loan repayments.

86% of employees say they’d commit to a company for five years if they had help paying back their student loan. So, offer some, and your employee retention will improve.

Retaining Top Talent: A Summary

We can summarize everything by breaking it down into these five points:

• Give them defined roles and career paths
• Offer fair and transparent compensation
• Provide mentorship programs
• Give them a range of flexible benefits – from health insurance through to student loan repayments
• Offer ongoing training and opportunities to develop

To really supercharge your employee retention, it pays to have an HR consulting firm on-board at all times. Contact EnformHR today, and we can help you manage your workforce and address all these key points. Give us a call or complete one of the forms on our site, and we look forward to hearing from you soon!