Why You Should Never Forget About Your Existing Team

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If your business is expanding at a rapid pace, it’s easy to place a primary focus on acquiring new talent. After all, you have new positions that need to be filled, and your business cannot move forward without new employees being brought into the fold.

There’s just one issue: you cannot simply concentrate on the new team. You have to invest just as much energy – if not more – into your current team members. They are the backbone of your business. Not only that, but if your employees walk out of the door, it can lead to a number of detrimental effects on your business.

For more information, this article will explain why you should never forget about your existing team.

The reasons why your employees can leave

Before getting into why you should keep your existing team together as best as possible, it’s wise to analyze the reasons why employees decide to take off for new pastures. Here are some key points:

·        A lack of opportunities to grow and earn promotions.

·        Substandard salary and benefits.

·        Failing to gel with their colleagues.

·        Dissatisfaction with those in leadership roles.

·        Unhealthy work/life balance.

There are also situations where they are comfortable with their position. However, if other companies scout them on LinkedIn due to their talent and offer them an exciting new career path, they may decide to leave if you cannot nurture the right environment that convinces them to stick around.

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Understand why employees are departing

If you’re having an issue with employee retention, first start by understanding why people are leaving your company. There are various ways in which this can be done. For example, you can conduct confidential attitude surveys by preparing exit interview questions or send follow-up questionnaires to former employees some months after their departure.

You can analyze reviews posted on platforms like Glassdoor in this day and age. These are often the best source for non-biased, constructive criticism you can ultimately use to improve how your business operates.

Why is it so important to retain staff?

You know why employees leave. You understand why they’ve waved goodbye to your company in favor of their new job. However, why is it so essential that you retain staff members and don’t let them leave unless it’s unavoidable? Here are a few of the main reasons to keep in mind:

Reduce expenses

It’s no secret that employee turnover is expensive. The process of recruiting new hires and getting them up to speed with training is a costly endeavor. This is especially the case if you have to pair this expense with severance costs.

Moreover, it isn’t only about the immediate expenses involved with recruiting. Inexperienced employees or those that are doing a job for the first time are unlikely to immediately perform at the skill set level of those they are replacing, which will lower customer experience quality. This will lead to a drop in revenue as a result.

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Improved morale

In your leadership role, the intention is to build strong relationships among your team. The more each employee gets on with each other and gels, the better this is for the overall performance of your team. Due to this, if a valuable, well-liked employee were to leave the group, this would be a downer for your remaining team members.

As senior leadership, when you keep the team together and long-term relationships are formed, morale will remain high. The result: your workplace is a more positive, pleasant environment. This not only helps with giving the overwhelming impression that your business is a fantastic place to work, but it also encourages everyone to stick around.

Less resources required for bringing in new talent

Even if you use our Talent Acquisition Recruitment Platform, significantly reducing the number of processes that need to be completed manually by using automation, there’s still work to be done when hiring new employees. These recruitment efforts are not only time-consuming, but they can also be disruptive and use up resources that are better served elsewhere.

It’s not just the hiring process you have to think about, either. You need to factor in the effort required to train these new hires. It could take days, weeks, or even months before they truly hit the speed required for their role.

By retaining talent, you can forget about dedicating so much time and resources to onboarding new hires. Instead, they can be utilized in much more effective ways – such as improving the workplace experience and providing perks for your current employees that will have a positive impact.

Enhanced productivity

Tenured employees that have been around for a long time know what they’re doing. They have developed and refined the necessary abilities to complete their day-to-day tasks, meaning it takes them a lot less time to solve problems and accomplish their goals.

Add in high morale and enhanced engagement levels, and their productivity is only further improved. This leads to better work quality, which then ultimately helps to push your business forward.

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Better customer experience

Happy, productive employees are just the type you want to interact with your customers. Their happiness exudes to customers. In addition, their productive approach also means they are efficient in completing whatever tasks customers send their way.

Strategies to boost employee retention

With the above benefits firmly in mind, you must take the necessary steps to lower turnover and ensure employees stay with your company. Once you have hired the right talent and built a strong team, you don’t want it to start crumbling away. With this in mind, here are some strategies to boost employee retention:

Internal growth opportunities

If an employee feels their career has stagnated and there’s no route to improving this within your company, they could decide to look elsewhere for more prosperous opportunities. Instead, empower career growth from within via internal mobility with a new management role, for example. When valuable talent recognizes they can improve their standing in your company, they’re less likely to depart.

Flexibility

A flexible approach is a great way to keep employees happy and assists with creating a healthy work/life balance. Even if it’s just allowing staff the freedom to work from home a couple of days a week, that flexibility will be appreciated – and it’s something they may not find elsewhere.

For instance, according to research conducted by Harvard Business Review, a recommended tactic is to support the outside passions of your employees. This doesn’t mean you have to go hiking with them or kick a football around. Yet if you provide flexibility where they can pursue their passions without their work life impacting them, this helps to enhance morale.

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Leverage feedback

You don’t know everything. This is true with how your business operates. Now you may believe everything is fine and functioning seamlessly, but your employees could have a different viewpoint. Well, you must get this viewpoint from them with consistent feedback.

By leveraging feedback, you can demonstrate to employees that you listen to what they say. It also means you can improve how your business functions and be better at decision-making when it comes to your employees’ happiness.

Recognition goes a long way

Employees who feel valued are much more likely to stay in their position. As a result, you should take all the necessary steps to recognize any quality work they complete to boost employee engagement. This can be done with simple feedback, or you may go a step further with rewards. These rewards can include everything from a gift card to additional time off.

With consistent recognition, employees feel respected and that they’re doing a good job. 

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