Thank you for listening to The Champion Forum Podcast! What would it be like if half of your team left for another job this year? Like it or not, current polls tell us that approximately 50% of employees are planning to leave their jobs right now. So, how do you keep people on your team? What makes employees love their jobs and stick around, even when new opportunities arise? Today, we’ll talk about why employees stay and the strategies that are working for companies, even through the great resignation.
Success is Fueled by Retention
Low employee retention can be particularly costly and detrimental to businesses in industries where specialized skills are essential, such as IT, hospitality, healthcare, sales, and manufacturing. When an employee leaves a company, dealing with their departure takes a considerable chunk of time. Entry-level employees typically cost 50% of their salary to replace. The more effort your company puts into understanding why people stay at their jobs, the more they can influence employee retention.
What do employees look for in a job?
Work / Life Balance
A recent national survey showed that 68% of employees prefer work-life balance over higher pay. Companies that put a lot of energy and planning into how they can help their employees create work-life balance are scoring the highest in retention in 2024. Make sure that as you explore providing greater work-life balance, you understand it may look different for each of your employees. Helping employees achieve a work-life balance requires listening to your people and being flexible as you find what works best. If you’re not sure how well your company encourages and supports work-life balance, ask yourself these questions:
Here are some starter questions to ask yourself:
How often do you email or message your team outside of regular work hours and create the expectation that they reply in the evenings and on weekends?
Do you genuinely encourage employees’ full use of paid time off? And do you support them in their absence?
Sense of Purpose
People want to know that the work they do matters, both personally and broadly. Leaders must understand where each employee derives their sense of purpose and how their work is related to it.
Ask yourself these questions about each of your employees:
Do you know why success is important to them? Do you know what drives them to be their best? What are they working hard to achieve?
Application Activities
Ask your employees what they believe their life would look like if they had the perfect work-life balance. What are some of the common responses? Based on their responses, is there anything you could implement to help offer greater work-life balance to your team? Come up with a plan you can implement as a leader and a plan you could present to other leaders in your company.
What is the purpose behind your company? Take some time and outline your team’s personal goals, the goals of the team, and the goals of the company. Where do they intersect? What broader purpose connects those intersecting goals? Once you have highlighted the purpose behind the goals that intersect, brainstorm some ways to help your employees feel more connected to that purpose throughout the week.
Comments