How To Retain Your Best Talent - 5 Tips to Keep Your Team Top-Tier
It’s easy to become obsessed with discovering fresh talent and making new hires within your business - but if you want to thrive in the long term, you’ll need to focus on talent retention.
If a large number of employees are leaving the company, you’ll face serious challenges as a business. With a high turnover, it will be difficult to maintain a strong company culture - on top of that, you’ll also be losing valuable time and money, with research suggesting that it costs employers around 33% of an employee’s salary to replace them.
However, if you can hold onto your best talent and build a nurturing culture that encourages staff to stay, you’ll be able to set yourself up for long-term success.
Let’s explore 5 expert tips for retaining top talent and keeping your turnover rates low.
1. Set up a clear progression path…
Employees are motivated when they’re able to work towards clear and achievable career goals.
If you’re unable to share a definitive progression path with your workers, they’re not likely to feel valued or incentivised, which will often lead them to seek out opportunities elsewhere.
To prevent this, make sure that every team member understands their individual career ladder, including key milestones, responsibilities, and appraisal timings.
2. …and help staff to achieve their goals
If you want to retain the best talent in your business, it’s not enough to show people their progression paths - you’ll also need to help them advance through them.
Studies show that Millennial/Gen Z employees place a particularly strong emphasis on professional growth, with 80% of respondents claiming they’d leave a company that didn’t offer personal development opportunities.
Make sure that you have sufficient training and development resources in place to keep your workforce engaged and motivated.
3. Lay the foundations by partnering with a recruiter
Working closely alongside a recruiter can be a fantastic way to put the building blocks in place for talent retention.
Not only will a recruiter be able to connect you with promising candidates that align with your business goals and company culture, but they’ll also be able to help you create an effective and engaging onboarding process.
A solid onboarding program can lead up to 69% of staff to stay at your business for 3+ years, so partnering with an experienced recruiter can pay dividends here.
4. Create a competitive work package
To keep your best talent on board, you’ll need to maintain a strong employee offering that positions you ahead of the competition.
Even the most loyal employees can be tempted by enticing offers from other businesses, particularly if there are unique benefits or salary increases involved.
To create an effective employee package that prevents high turnover, make sure that you’re:
- Offering a competitive salary that’s regularly compared with the rest of the market
- Delivering perks that your employees want, such as remote/hybrid working
- Providing employees with persuasive benefits (e.g. insurance, gym discounts)
It’s important not to become complacent with your offering as an employer. Talent retention becomes much more difficult when your competitors are bringing superior work packages to the table!
5. Actively seek out feedback from staff
One of the best things you can do to retain your top talent? Listen to them.
You may be surprised at how much insight your own workforce can provide when it comes to job satisfaction, company culture, and employee benefits.
Try to gather regular feedback from your staff to understand how morale is looking and whether individuals are potentially looking for job opportunities elsewhere.
Anonymous surveys are a brilliant way to collect transparent and honest opinions, which you can use to make critical adjustments across your business.
Surveys won’t just help your workforce to feel valued and recognised - they’ll also provide you with valuable information that can make the difference between positive retention rates and high turnover.
Talent retention is hugely important in a competitive job marketplace, so make sure that you’re always focusing on developing, engaging, and listening to your staff.
Need expert support with attracting and retaining the best talent in your industry? We can help - at Barclay Meade, our recruitment specialists will enable you to identify promising candidates, secure top hires, and successfully build your workforce.
Is your business looking to hire? Send us your vacancy details and we'll be in touch.