You know that crippling feeling when a top performer resigns out of nowhere, and you don’t see it coming? It can make your head spin. As you begin to reassemble to pieces and fill the void they have left, you lean on your remaining team members to take on more responsibility while you start the groundwork on finding a replacement. The situation becomes more tense to the point that they start thinking of leaving too because they feel overworked and possibly underpaid. And then it’s a vicious cycle of trying to find replacements all over again!
Anyone will tell you that finding good talent is one thing, but retaining them is different. The yesteryear tactics may not work in this competitive market, so what are your options to retain the cream of the crop?
Top 5 Creative Employee Retention Strategies
1. Creative ways to develop your employees
Organizing events and opportunities for your team to collaborate and problem solve creates powerful opportunities for connection and synergy. This connection is felt amongst the group itself and with the organization and its mission. Organizing internal company hackathons that solve and tackle real problems is a creative tool for employee retention. It inspires and motivates the team and reminds them of the bigger picture. Also, hackathons are great avenues to see potential while identifying your employees’ strengths.
2. Sabbaticals are always a winning idea
Acknowledging the need for employees to escape from the office goes a very long way – that’s where employee sabbatical comes in. By allowing employees to have an extended amount of time to recoup and rejuvenate, you’ll find that employees come back feeling inspired to be more creative and feel more encouraged to stay with the company. The business can achieve a lot by taking this little step to reduce employee turnover.
3. Allow co-creating the employee experience
Everyone would like to shape their experiences, whether in their professional or personal life. By allowing the co-creation of the employee experience in the workplace, the manager can optimize it at a more personalized level. There’s a misconception that co-creating can breed chaos, but this can’t be farther from the truth. It fosters the opposite instead and leads to positivity in that management still has the power to decide what can and cannot be co-created, while employees who are given the freedom to change things will do so for the greater good. Doesn’t sound like chaos to us.
4. Don’t sleep on job rotation and providing lateral opportunities
Having star performers takes time and effort. It might not seem ideal to deploy your high-performing staff to other parts of the organization, but have you thought of how this could benefit the employees and the business? Not only is this an effective way of strengthening the company by preparing potential future leaders, but it also fosters having fresh ideas, makes succession planning more effortless, and improves employee retention.
5. Foster open communication
This may seem like a no-brainer, but open communication culture is often not created amongst teams. Employees should feel safe and valued enough to come to their managers with ideas, questions, and concerns at any time. They shouldn’t feel they have to walk on eggshells or that managers will use any mistake against them. There’s nothing worse than reporting to a power tripper, which is a significant reason an employee would choose to quit. One way to foster open communication is to have 1:1s with your direct reports regularly so they can share updates and challenges. On a bigger scale, you can also run town hall meetings where you can allow questions and answers for employees to express any concerns or questions.