While COVID-19 is winding down, employees are returning to work and trying to get back to “normal.” However, employers are still experiencing challenges in attracting new employees and retaining existing employees. During the COVID-19 pandemic, most employees could work from home. Now, employers are trying to bring their employees back into the office, forcing them to contemplate what they truly want from their jobs and commute. For the most part, employees have resorted to finding a new employer as a direct path toward their goals. In January 2022, 4.25 million individuals quit their job.
Based on the new requirements employees are requesting, employers should consider implementing the following:
- Providing remote or hybrid working arrangements
- Expanding employee assistance programs to help with mental health and burnout
- Increasing compensation and/or bonuses
- Planning more frequent meetings with managers and employees regarding engagement levels and ways to improve them
However, there is one solution HR professionals haven't fully grasped to retain employees - technology. Continue reading to learn strategies in which technology can assist you with retention while providing a more positive employee experience.
Leveraging Technology To Retain Employees
Technology can be utilized to retain employees and reduce turnover. Below are strategies you should begin implementing to provide a more positive employee experience.
1. Conduct surveys
The first question to ask yourself is why your employees are leaving. Turnover, in most cases, results from employees feeling burned out or underappreciated. These feelings from your employee develop from poor relationships, lack of work-life balance, or maybe even from lack of growth opportunities. To combat these feelings, you must ensure you’re checking in on your employees. An excellent tool that helps with this is by conducting surveys. Employee surveys help keep track of and improve team collaboration and ensure that all employees feel valued and heard. Simply asking questions and providing employees the opportunity to make their voices heard can lead to more positive behaviors and, ultimately, lower turnover.
The following are examples of questions you could ask to get the most out of your employee surveys:
- How do you feel at work today?
- Do you feel excited about coming to work?
- Would you recommend this company to your friends as an employer?
- Are you satisfied with your current compensation and benefits?
- Do you enjoy working with your team?
Once your employees complete the survey, it’s vital that you analyze the results and act to address your employee’s feedback.
2. Professional development
When business owners encourage their employees to seek professional development opportunities, they experience increased productivity and job satisfaction. Businesses that don’t offer professional development opportunities see greater turnover than those that do provide resources. While there are various programs out there used for professional development, a learning management system (LMS) has been one of the most common platforms. An LMS is a web-based platform or software application to implement and monitor a learning process. It’s used to deploy learning strategies across the workplace, facilitate experiential and formal learning, manage compliance training, and enhance sales enablement.
3. Offer competitive pay
Employee compensation is essential for employee retention as it helps businesses avoid the high costs associated with turnover. Compensation has been one of the main reasons employees change jobs. A study showed that 63% of employees reported low pay as a key reason they left their job in 2021. The loose labor market has given employees more leverage regarding pay and benefits. As the employer, you must determine the most competitive salary or pay for your employees to retain and attract the talent you need. By conducting a salary analysis, you can compare a specific position with similar roles within your industry to determine the proper pay. Perhaps you offer slightly over that number to ensure you stand out from similar organizations.
4. Reward and recognize good performance
When business owners incorporate a reward and recognition program, it helps employee engagement which leads to many benefits for the company, including increased productivity and retention. By focusing on the positives, recognition initiatives convey that what employees do matters and are not unnoticed. When you reward excellent performance with benefits your employees want, it keeps them focused and driven to perform better. Starting a rewards and recognition program will:
- Increase motivation
- Show appreciation
- Encourage friendly competition
- Improve productivity
- Boost employee retention
- Create a positive workplace
To incorporate an employee recognition program, you can begin implementing the following:
- Weekly shoutout on social media
- Conduct surveys to determine employee of the quarter, month, or even the year
- Press releases
- Newsletters
- Internal software to acknowledge a job well done
You can utilize many ideas to ensure you have the appropriate program set in place for your business.
5. Work/life balance
One’s job plays a significant part in their life and takes up a huge chunk of each day. Our jobs ensure that we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, clothes on our bodies, and so much more. As a business owner, your job is to ensure that your employees maintain a healthy work-life balance. Work-life balance is defined as the state of equilibrium where a person equally prioritizes the demands of one’s career and the demands of one’s personal life.
While showing up at work is essential for your business's growth, your employees' well-being is the most important aspect of your business. If your employees are sick or burned out, it will cost you now and in the long run. By creating a workplace culture that doesn’t feel like a chore, your employees will work hard, make fewer mistakes, and are more likely to become advocates for your brand.
The following are tips you can use to improve work-life balance in your business:
- Encourage time off
- Implement short breaks throughout the day
- Practice what you preach
- Maintain a regular schedule for working hours
- Establish a sacred work area
- Support flexible hours
- Empathize with and tolerate absenteeism
Implementing cloud technology with your standard technology platforms allows your employees to access everything from any location. It gives your employees the flexibility of working from home and empowers them to be more productive while also managing their personal lives.
Why You Should Outsource These Efforts
With the loose labor market, you must ensure you are doing everything you can to retain and attract top talent. At GMS, we understand how many tasks you handle day-to-day and know that it can be challenging to increase these efforts. We’re here to tell you not to worry anymore. GMS experts are here to help. From providing you with an LMS and cloud-based technology to creating benefits that will attract and retain the talent you need, we do it all in-house. Kalynn Muha, GMS’ Recruitment Specialist, expressed, “One of the most important aspects of an organization is their success, and employee retention promotes this. Hiring new employees is costly and consumes so much of the employer's time. In addition, turnover can cause rifts in employee morale and low productivity. In today's market, hiring is a long and tiring process. It’s more important than ever for business owners to retain their valuable employees before they go elsewhere.”
Contact us today, so you don’t have to be part of the effects of the Great Resignation.