Employee Retention Meaning

Let us break apart the term Employee Retention and understand the concept of Employee Retention. We all know that RETENTION refers to the ability to uphold, keeping, maintaining, or surviving through something or specific phase. Moreover, Employee Retention concerns the ideology of keeping the employees in an organization happy and content in the long run. Employee Retention can be done by laying various policies and practices, a work-friendly environment, healthy culture, rules, and regulations, which let the employees stick to an organization for a longer time. It undergoes various steps and sacrifices to achieve employee retention for the maximum time.

Employee Retention Importance

Now we have heard a lot about the importance of Employee Retention by various phrases, but its time to understand its importance from a depth in different ways-

• Hiring requires a lot of resources: Following the entire journey from drawing job descriptions, selecting universities for pool drives, inviting and managing candidates there, going through the resumes, taking interviews, undergoing the differential screening procedure, shortlisting, grilling the candidates to get a refined version of them, and then finally followed by training. This entire journey is crucial and requires patience, skills, time, capital, and utmost management.
• Grooming a candidate: A new fresher is like a clay molded and baked at regular intervals to extract maximum outputs. If the employee leaves the firm, the company would lose dearly. How much loss a company will undergo? Moreover, a redundant and frustrating effort of HR will be costed in this entire cycle. 
• Market competition: Today, everyone is smart, intelligent, and selfish of their own’s gain and pain, and when coming to leaving a job, there is a high risk of joining the market rival by that employee. It may result in disclosing confidential company data, company policies, or strategies. However, to avoid these circumstances, an undertaking document is made signed by the candidate, and also strict laws are laid out.
• Quality time spent in an Organization: As someone has stayed for a longer period knows the exact requirement, working culture, and ideologies of a company, and tunes well with others, also become a mentor for others. They perform better than individuals who change jobs frequently. Spending more time with an organization is also a trait of loyalty and trustworthiness of a person.
• Time taken for adjustment: One needs time to know the team members, working culture, improving performance, befriending fellow mates, and trusting them. The team bonding is built through team activities: a lot of team collaborations, discussions, solving challenges and working together. All of these processes cost time, which is costly. So why to waste the company’s time on such irregular adjusting intervals. 
• Important for a company to retain value: Every organization runs on its talented and hardworking smart people. These people are very creative and stand unique by their values. Losing a chance to retain employees equals losing a performing talent. 

How to retain employees

There is always a right way and an appropriate methodology to solve a problem efficiently and effectively. Although the term EMPLOYEE RETENTION was pretty easy to understand, even if someone has not got the exact essence, I assure you you will get to know a lot about it after reading these strategies. So without wasting much of the time, let’s take a glance at the various methods to improve or establish employee retention in an organization

1. It all starts with the recruitment– “Retention starts right from the beginning, from the application process to screening applicants to choosing who to interview,” says Dan Pickett, CEO of Nfrastructure. Remember to build that trust and outstanding quality of yours to the candidate. Be sure that you pick the right candidate, give appropriate training and resources to them, and maintains a personnel touch with them. It is similar to investment; the longer hold it, the better would be the returning goods. 
2. Benefitting the employees– You are running a company to fulfill your wishes and our paying a person to do some random tasks so that you make money out of it. Fine! Not to forget you are paying them( fair enough). But they are human beings too, isn’t it somewhere your responsibility to keep them happy? Yes? So try to invest a little amount on their health benefits, working location choices, personal grooming, paying good money, or simply providing them with transportation facilities.
3. Flexible working schedule or working hours– Time is changing, so does the working culture. Don’t you think one must instead focus on the result rather than the working style? Everyone is unique; some might like working in the daytime; some may be a night geek. You should set them flexible on working hours, productivity, and working schedule. Just assign them the task and headlines, be there as a mentor, but don’t sit over their heads like bosses and rule them after each second. Instead, be a leader, understand them, and spend the journey with them. 
4. Appreciating open and comfortable communications– Do not create an overrated strict environment, that people tend to think thrice before speaking and keep their mouths shut. NO! Treat them as your friend, welcome their suggestions, understand their grievances, and mentor them. If questions are raised, do not turn up your ego or anger. Employees ask questions only at workplaces where people feel a belongingness and want things to improve. An open-door policy is an effective way to establish a culture of open communication. Give them a feeling of a valued employee, by simply listening to them.  
5. Concern on personal growth – Everyone strives for personal development and aspires to work at a place where they can bloom and enhance themselves. So being an employer, you should create opportunities, augment the working experience, regular promotions, or learning culture for the employees. Provide them with the latest skill training, regular sessions, or collaborative workshops. 
6. Assure the quality of the entire working chain– Often, we miss checking on the seniors mentoring the freshers or the junior employees. Sometimes the quality inconsistency creates & causes a void whenever tried to detect a loophole. To avoid this practice, top-to-bottom and the reverse way anonymous surveys to detect the actual pain point. This is particularly important for average performers, as they often lack the quality of self-motivation that characterizes high-performing employees. 
7. Immediate action on the loopholes– Don’t procrastinate the decisions of firm welfare. When you are sure about something, practice it, if not search about it, until you conclude. You must find the wrong patterns and address them before it is too late, and you end up losing value. Measure productivity at regular intervals and deploy an employee engagement survey. 
8. Building future-ready and resistant to unfit conditions workforce– Were you aware of the COVID19 pandemic arrival a couple of years back? No right? Economic downswing, or a dramatic dip in profitability, is a significant cause of turnover. Employees want to harbor on a safer side, and they leave that company immediately. Such phenomena pull out talent from your company. But if you prepare the workforce beforehand, offer financial support, and instill confidence in the company’s future, you can prevent significant turnover. 
9. Time for a reward– Out of human tendency, everyone wants to feel appreciated for their work. As soon as you like or value any a of an individual, make a habit of thanking them, a written gift card, an incentive pay, a day off, a dine away, or giving them the honor of badge to them. This will keep them motivated, enthusiastic, and a craving to perform better.

To conclude, I would like to say that it is time for you to understand your working force, converse with them, and then decide which strategy to use to fix the organization’s retention leak.