by Jacqueline McClure, Genesis Background Screening Services
If your company is experiencing a large volume of employees moving on, it’s time to consider why. Aside from the cost of recruiting and training a new employee, the disruption to your business and your customers adds to your loss. It is hard to attract quality employees when your company’s reputation, as an employer, suffers. And any disruption to customer service because of missing staff or inexperienced new employees can make it harder to retain your clients.
With our economy, many companies assume that their staff will stay put for security. But a large number of employees no longer fear changing jobs will hurt their career. In fact, many job hoppers find that changing jobs is the best (or only) way to increase their pay and title. But overall, the reason a majority of employees leave a company is feeling disengaged. If you want to keep your valuable employees, help them keep their passion and motivation. It is in your best interest to help your staff stay invested in your company’s success by keeping them engaged.
How can you help your workforce thrive and motivated to accomplish your company’s mission?
- Practice good communication with your direct reports – Regular conversations with your direct reports will go a long way to keep them engaged. Keeping your employees in the loop on how their contributions affect the company will help them stay focused on your business goals.
- Provide clear expectations and written goals – Employees who understand what is expected, the timelines, and how success will be measured are much more likely to perform well in their jobs.
- Give timely feedback – Annual reviews have their purpose, but continuous feedback can be much more effective in correcting problems, rewarding successes, and providing encouragement. Take advantage of addressing what is going on right now to optimize opportunities to improve immediately instead of waiting 6 months or longer for the annual review.
- Coach instead of dictating – Coaching your direct reports has a huge advantage over just giving orders. Coaching can help employees to learn how to be more proactive and problem solving instead of always depending on their managers to direct their every move. Managers’ time will be better spent teaching their direct reports to be more self sufficient and employees will feel more respected and able to grow in their job.
- Check on engagement – It’s always a good idea to find ways to check on employee engagement. Surveying your employees with a short questionaire can bring you some surprising information – especially if you structure it in a way that you can see which managers are getting the best feedback. Any time you have a manager that gets good feedback and has a good rate of retention of employees, it is time to see if you can replicate what that manager is doing to accomplish that goal company-wide.
Helping your employees feel that their work has value and contributes to the success of your company goes a long way to keeping their skills and experience in your company. You will have less worry about job hoppers if you work to keep your staff engaged.
In addition to using best HR practices, Genesis Background Screening always suggests a thorough pre-employment background screening to help you make an informed decision. For more information, contact Genesis Background Screening Services at 866 944-0041 ext 103, email getstarted@gbsspro.com or visit www.genesisbackgroundscreening.com
