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Employee retention – Look after your staff, look after your business

Guest post by: Iris Barrow

Article Overview: A business needs to know how to look after its people, and have them committed to their work and highly motivated. Its true strength lies in its people. This article gives 10 essential keys to keep your team loyal and enthusiastic about their organization. They are important to build team spirit and engender a desire to ‘give of one’s best’ They are all very simple to activate, but, having worked in industry in an advisory capacity for many years, I can tell you that they are essential for any organization that wishes to build productivity, retain staff and ‘stay the distance’. No business can afford to ignore them.

Employee retention – Look after your staff, look after your business

It’s simple really; organizations that look after their people are looking after themselves in the most positive and effective way.

You can’t buy loyalty, commitment, motivation and a good team spirit, but you can generate it by making your people feel that they are valued and appreciated, both for themselves and their skills.

Organisations that get this right have a head start in the business world. If your staff feel that they are valued as a person firstly, and then for what they can do for you, you will have got it right. If people just feel that they are regarded as tools to be made use of, they will not be enthusiastic and motivated to ‘give of their best’. As one man said to me, when I was giving a training programme to an organization, “I’m only here to hold out my hand for my pay packet every week. Why should I care about them, when they obviously don’t care about me?”

So what can employers do to generate loyalty and a desire to give of their best in their employees? The following are a few simple keys that will start this particular ball rolling.

1. Have an easily accessible suggestion box available, and encourage people to use it. Let it be known that their suggestions will be given consideration, and will be responded to. This can be done through the communication system that is operating in your organization. If a suggestion cannot be accepted, give the reason why. If people have gone to the trouble of putting it forward they deserve a response. Let it be known that anonymous suggestions are acceptable.
2. Have regular team meetings, ideally weekly, but at least fortnightly.
3. At these meetings, people should be given a little time to ask questions and voice their concerns.
4. At least once a month the General Manager or CEO should address the whole organization, to update them on what is happening, how the firm is doing, and outline future direction. A person who is kept informed is far more likely to commit to the organization. In some instances, this cannot be done face-to-face. If this is the case use the intranet, email, conference calls, or whichever modes of communication will best reach your workforce.
5. Form a social club, to be run by the staff, and have regular relaxed get-togethers. This is a great way for people to bond. If they do so, they are far more likely to get on well together, care about and support each other. This is important. People want far more from their job than to be paid well. Doing things like this helps to build ‘a family feel’ in the place. If you can create this culture you are more likely to have people pulling together as a team, and feeling that they have an important part to play in the organization.
6. Provide the opportunity for people who have problems to come and talk to somebody who is a good listener, and who is emotionally mature enough to make some helpful suggestions. If necessary offer them professional counselling help.
7. Offer regular supervision to people. This is a good way to support them and upgrade their training. It is to the organization’s advantage to do this as it identifies and can deal with problem areas early.
8. If a person is performing inefficiently, offer them help. I have frequently found in dealing with industry, that the fault often lies not with the person, but with management, because they did not ensure that the person had sufficient training to do the job well.
9. Put the accent on good, free-flowing, open communication, and then watch productivity increase. A happy worker gets better results.
10. In my book, How to Lead and Motivate Others, I say that when faced with people problems and difficult situations, confront, don’t ignore. One of the biggest mistakes the leader or manager can make is to shut their eyes and hope it will all go away. It won’t. Problems involving people do not usually just fade away and disappear, rather they tend to steadily build up. So deal with the problem when it is smaller rather than bigger, that way it can quickly be sorted out.

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Article Tags: advisory capacity, communication, confront, counselling, culture, employee retention, lead, loyalty, meetings, motivation, problems, productivity, social club, suggestion box, team spirit, training



Related Forum Posts
Re: Finding AND Keeping Good People - Employee retention or as you mention “Keeping the Good People” is one of the biggest challenges for any growing business. It takes a huge effort from the entrepreneur’s end. I can come up with the following when it comes to KEEPing the good people- 1. Motivation of the employees 2. Recognition of the needs of the employees 3. Activities to make the employees feel valuable towards the organization 4. Make benefits more accessible 5. Offer profit sharing incentives 6. Create clear career paths at the company 7. Consider telecommuting, job sharing and other flexible working arrangements 8. Incentives are essential and they don't have to be huge 9. Have other managers praise an employee's work 10. Be sensitive to the balance between work and private life
Setting a Budget For Professional Development - Hi Louis - I think a big challenge is that many entrepreneurs don't set a budget for professional development. It's usually something companies will look at as they hire people and use as a staff retention & development tool but it's not usually the case that you'll find an entrepreneur sets a professional development budget for themselves.
Post subject: It's Not Personal, just business - I so agree! Actually, the business world as we know it IS in trouble. I heard some stats last week that they expect by the time 2050 that 70% of workers will be freelancers. Employee/Executive Bullying won't be able to stand it when it could be easier for someone to simply contract with the nicer guy (or gal). I, for one, will be choosing the nicer ones!
Re: [JOINT VENTURE] Want FREE Staff? Want to Scale Up Massively? - Hi JV, Really interesting offer. However I have 2 questions. 1) Credentials? Any website? Any client list? 2) Where do you get your staff from? How? I mean if i really am going to hand over a lot of sensitive information to be handled by staff of your choosing, I'll need to know how you operate with total transparency.
Re: Should you hire ambitious workers or employees with no goals - [quote="TheRainmaker":yeumhkgq]Wow - I dont think I have ever referred to my staff as grunts. that is horrible. I personally hire great attitudes. ambitious to do good work, grow and fulfill their inner goals. if you go the other way, you have to do much more hand holding and they will never go the extra mile for you or your business...[/quote:yeumhkgq] Well I don't think any boss would ever call their employees "grunts" (unless it was a joke), but like it or not, that's what they (or we) are. In a sense, even an entrepreneur is a "grunt", cog or moving part in his/her own corporation. No one lives forever and not even the founder/owner of a small business is irreplaceable. As proof of this, a business can exist for as long as it's profitable with the right staff.


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