Personnel Tips to Help You Avoid Employee Turnover

When you find good talent, it’s important to nurture it. Read on to discover our top personnel tips to help you avoid employee turnover.

Sinking a lot of time and money into employee recruitment, only to lose hires to high turnover?

The costs of high employee turnover are staggering. Even worse, poor turnover can snowball until it becomes a problem that keeps on giving. So what does an effective company do to keep talent and nurture it after the recruitment period?

Below, we’ve put together some key personnel tips to help you retain your expertise.

Hire the Right People

The first of our personnel tips is also one of the most complicated.

Many job hunters are looking for a job first, and a nurturing work environment second. Getting back into work is often the first step before looking for better opportunities. You need to break through that barrier to find someone who won’t jump ship once they’re in a stable position.

That involves putting in the time to figure out a few things. Look at the job itself, your company ethos, and your work environment. Decide what kind of person fits that image best.

If you hire someone overqualified or whose personality doesn’t seem to match the job, it’s going to be on you when they quit.

Let’s say you hire a creative, energetic and vivacious person for a by-the-numbers desk job with little room for self-expression. They’ll soon grow bored and look for something else.

This is why interviewers ask why a candidate wants the job, and why “I want money” isn’t an acceptable answer. Hiring is expensive, so get it right the first time.

Create Development Plans

Although a job pays a living wage, most people consider that part an ugly necessity.

Employment can feel eerily like grinding in a video game. Robbed of context, making money in itself isn’t engaging.

Creating a development plan puts motivation back into that “game.” It creates an objective to work toward and rewards the brain with the same good feeling when progress is made.

By turning their job role into a path to progress, your employees will see a deeper benefit to working with your company.

Many people go looking for a new job because they feel stuck in a rut. Breaking out of that haze of “same stuff, different day” is vital to maintaining employee engagement.

Not only that, but you’ll have more able staff at the end of it, so it’s really a win-win.

Good development plans always make the list of personnel tips. Make your development plans SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Review these goals often in casual catch-ups and performance meetings.

Listen to Grievances

Here’s a personnel tip you should never skip: always have a grievance policy.

Even if they don’t take further action, employees will always feel better for being heard. Ideally, your grievance policy should clearly outline the steps you’ll take to address and resolve a grievance.

This not only reduces the likelihood of an employee disappearing out the door, but it even reduces the chances of legal action against you at a later date.

Although most try to be professional, work can become an emotional place. Ensure your grievance policy exists outside of that atmosphere. It should turn any problem into a set of actions one or all involved parties can undertake.

Involve your HR department if things aren’t working out. Resignation or firing should never be the first options on the table except in situations of serious misconduct. There are almost always alternative steps you can take.

Provide Good Facilities

Half of all Americans spend more time at work than home. And those are just the extreme cases.

We all know the pain of a house in poor repair. It only takes one major leak to ruin your mood. But did you realize the same is true of a working environment?

Our environment influences our mood. Employees don’t want to work with the added stress of a leaking urinal. It’ll lower staff morale, and ensure your workers won’t be proud of the place they work.

So refurbish the break room, give the walls a new lick of paint, and repair any long-standing issues. No one wants to work in a building that smells of sewage, so call up Proseptic septic tank problems.

Improving your facilities may seem expensive, but so is hiring new staff. And maintenance is something you can budget for, whereas staff turnover often comes as a surprise.

You can also try to get staff opinions on your interior design. What do they feel it’s lacking?

Maybe they want brighter colors or some more plants around the place. Often these are simple fixes that can result in huge morale gains.

Build Company Loyalty

With the rise of the disposable workforce, it’s getting harder than ever for employees to hitch their wagon to a company they care about.

Buck the trend by promoting company loyalty in your employees. There are two major ways to do this: let’s call them “hard” and “soft”.

“Hard” methods involve building loyalty with tangible rewards. Bonuses, extra days off, or healthcare and strong pension schemes can all help to keep staff in your company.

These aren’t only nice-to-haves for your workers. Many employees look for ways to secure their future, whether it’s retirement or good health. If you can’t offer these incentives, they’ll go somewhere that will.

“Soft” methods involve team-building days, employee suggestions, and guest speakers. Work with staff to design a new logo or slogan, or create a corner of the building dedicated to employee art.

The right combination of the two will make your company into more than a simple day job.

And loyal employees have greater benefits, too. If your workers are proud to identify with your company, they’ll become brand ambassadors – now that’s low-budget marketing!

Personnel Tips for Reduced Turnover

These personnel tips should help you reduce your employee turnover. Refer to them often and measure yourself, too. By looking at your stats, you can work out where to take things in future.

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