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Any manager or owner of a business is only too aware that recruitment can be an extremely costly, and time-consuming process. That is why it pays to be proactive in your approach and do all you can to make sure you keep your best workers over the long term. Happily, you can find some of the most effective ideas for doing this in the post below.
Listen to your employees
The first way you can maximize your chances of keeping high-quality employees over the long term is to listen to them. Yes, this very simple thing can make all the difference to an employee, making them feel valued and respected in their position.
The funny thing is that there are few people better qualified to give useful feedback on your business than your employees. After all, they work for you day in and day out and have direct experience with what is working and what can be improved within your company.
With that in mind, finding ways to listen and acknowledge the thoughts, complaints and feedback of your employees is crucial. To do this you may wish to run schemes like suggestion boxes or send out anonymous questionnaires. (anonymity helps employees be more honest in their feedback because they feel more secure and less at risk of consequences should someone in management take exception to their comments).
Trust your employees & treat them well
Next, how you treat your employees can have a huge impact on whether they choose to stay with you over the long term. In particular demonstrating that you trust your workers to complete the tasks you employ them to do properly, and to a high quality without being micromanaged is crucial.
Indeed, studies have shown that individuals nearly always perform better when they are trusted with responsibility, rather than when they have their superiors breathing down their necks, and checking their every move.
Additionally, when it comes to treating your employees well you must respectfully interact with them. Treating people as less than you because they work for you is a fast track to resentment and losing your best workers. Similarly paying a fair wage is part and parcel of this respect and should be something every business does from the beginning to the end of any employee’s term with them.
Offer specialist training
Another way to ensure you retain the best employers over the long term is to make sure that you offer them significant and relevant training opportunities. Indeed, professional development is crucial not only for the job satisfaction and confidence of your employees but also for the smooth running and compliance of your organization.
In particular, training needs to be relevant to the employees, their needs, goals, and fields to be worthwhile. To facilitate this, businesses and organizations can find it can be especially useful to find a specialist training provider that operates in your field.
For example, CEU Training offers professional development, training, and education specifically designed for community care professionals and administrators in California. The benefit of this is that they offer flexible, comprehensive training designed especially to meet the regulations used in a specific location, thereby providing your employees with the training they need, and at the same time ensuring compliance of your company.
Provide opportunities for advancement
In addition to offering plenty of training opportunities for your staff, making sure they have access to opportunities to advance in their career is just as important for long-term retention.
This is because few people are happy to work in the same role over several years without the addition of extra responsibility and pay. Unfortunately, this can create some major issues for organizations that have a low turnover, because there aren’t the promotion opportunities needed to motivate those currently coming up through the ranks.
With that in mind, you may wish to explore an alternative advancement structure for your business. One that perhaps rewards achievement and longevity with tiers or levels that are associated with specific benefits such as additional pay or additional paid time off. Then you don’t end up with an entire company full of managers with no one underneath them to be managed, but still reward experience and longevity.
Offer flexibility
Last of all, if you want to do everything in your power to keep your best employees over the long term, then it’s a very smart idea to offer them flexibility. The reason that so many people value flexibility from their employer is because it allows them to have a better work-life balance, which in turn can help them to stay healthier, happier and more content in the workplace.
The good news is that there are several different types of flexibility that employers can provide. The first kind is flexible hours. This means still coming into the office every day but allows the employee to dictate their hours of work. Usually, this works best when you have a weekly number of hours that are required to be met, and then you leave how to distribute this to your employees.
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Another form of flexibility that employers can provide that can help retain workers over the long term is to offer good maternity and paternity benefits. Indeed, by supporting your employees through such a major life change, rather than adding to their stress, you increase your chances that they will want to stay with your company for the long term.
Finally, another type of flexibility that you may wish to offer your employees is the option to work from home at least 2-3 days a week. Since the pandemic demonstrated that working from home successfully is possible, this can become a very popular opinion.
Indeed, there are many benefits that your employees can reap by working from home including more time to themselves instead of their commute, not having to deal with office politics, being able to be more autonomous in their roles, and being able to take more meaningful breaks to do things that they enjoy such as hobbies or fitness. Of course, over time these benefits should help increase the satisfaction of your employees which deter them from jumping ship to other businesses in your field.
