Hiring the right candidate, for any job, is difficult enough. In most cases, you have no idea who your interviewees are beyond a brief cover letter and resume, meaning you don’t know how well they’ll fit at your company, and only have a small window to be able to pick up as many such clues as you can.
To boot, hiring people is expensive. Usually, companies pay new employees while they’re training and learning, and it can take a good amount of time for the new employees to really hit their stride and perform at the peak level your organization demands.
For those reasons and more, once you’ve gone through the painstaking process of finding that perfect employee, you’re going to want to make sure he or she stays with your company for the long haul. The key to employee retention is to make sure that your employees are happy working at your company, but how, exactly, can you do that? Here are three tips from Charles Foster on how to do so:
Institute And Execute Incentives And Rewards Plans
When you hire a new employee, one of the things you need to make sure he or she understands is that he or she will be rewarded for great work. Having an exact policy in place for this will help because it lays down the guidelines and expectations ahead of time. Any time an employee helps make a sale, or lands a client, or earns the company a glowing recommendation for his or her work, the employee should feel valued and appreciated, and compensated in a manner that reflects this. Whether the compensation comes in the form of a bonus, a promotion, a raise, or even an extra vacation day, it is imperative to demonstrate your appreciation to employees who make your company look good.
Provide Continuous Feedback
While not recommended to micromanage and write up detailed reports on every small task an employee performs, it is considered helpful to frequently provide feedback for employees every so often to make sure that they’re aware of your expectations, and whether or not they’re meeting them. Make sure you’re always communicating with your employees after large projects on how they did- ranging from a simple, “GREAT JOB!” email in all capitals to a quick pointer of something he or she could do better next time. As long as you’re not overwhelming your employees with pages of feedback, and as long as it remains constructive, most employees tend to appreciate the constant feedback.
Be Reasonable And Flexible
As is the case for businesses and individuals alike, things tend to pop up and provide unpleasant surprises that need to be dealt with immediately. As a manager, it’s imperative that you be understanding of this and work around other people’s personal needs. As long as your employees don’t abuse your grace and goodwill (which is certainly something worth paying attention to with newer employees), being understanding of your staff’s personal priorities will go a long way toward keeping them comfortable at your company- and if and when the time comes that someone else offers them another job, they’ll keep that in mind.