Qlearsite’s Retention Series
Discover the three steps you should take to boost employee retention – from identifying the warning signs and understanding the reasons, to deciding what actions to take.
You’ll learn everything you need to know about employee retention. But more importantly, because every organisation is different, you’ll get practical advice on understanding retention in your workplace. Our platform makes it faster, easier, and more affordable to manage retention effectively.
In the last post, we looked at why employees left. Here we start to look at how to pro-actively manage your retention risks.
Blog 3
In this series we’ve talking about spotting the signs that someone’s going to leave. We’ve also explored the reasons why employees resign. But what can you do to make people stay?
Our platform has been built to give you actionable people insights – and taking action is the most important thing you can do to keep people on board. Once you’ve gathered the information, assessed the data, and understood what matters to your team, it’s time to turn that into change.
This article will give you a few ideas of actions you can take. But, more importantly, it’ll also explain how our platform helps you prioritise what next steps to take.
7 practical ways to boost your employee retention rate
1. Listen to what your employees are saying
It’s an obvious one, but so many organisations undervalue it: listening to your employees’ feedback is the #1 way to understand how to solve your organisational challenges.
The method matters though. A lot of employee surveys are surface-level, giving you a broad ‘score’ without any deeper understanding. To get actionable people insights – ones based on data, and allowing you to understand context – you need to use a platform like Qlearsite.
2. Review your employee value proposition
Often considered more in relation to attracting new employees, your EVP is also crucial to retaining them. It means considering everything that you can offer people – not just salary and perks, but the broader value they get from working for you.
One way to boost retention is to actively review how attractive your EVP is. Have you adapted to new demands for flexibility, are you prioritising a sense of purpose, is your commitment to bettering the world (socially, culturally, environmentally) clear?
3. Invest in a management training programme
As we’ve learnt, people quit bad managers – not bad jobs. So investing time, energy and money in training your managers is an obvious way to boost retention.
At the very least, this should cover the basics. A ‘101 of line management’ – something many miss out on, due to people management often being something you fall into as the only opportunity for progression, even when it’s not a skillset of the person promoted.
4. Update and improve your onboarding process
A proactive approach would be to review your onboarding processes. Get it right, and employees are 69% more likely to stay with the company. It’s a simple way of laying the groundwork for a long, mutually beneficial work relationship.
Review the tools you use, and how they could be better utilised to get the ‘admin’ of onboarding out of the way. Think about the challenges that remote or hybrid employees may face, and how it might take longer for them to feel connected. And ask your current staff about their own experiences, and where it could’ve been better.
5. Make sure career development is a priority
Research suggests that people value progression more than pay. That’s not something you want to forget – because employees know their time is valuable, and will leave if you’re not giving them an opportunity to grow.
You might not have the budget to start throwing promotions and pay rises around, but there are other ways to invest in learning and development. Consider sideways moves, coaching opportunities, and ways you can recognise hard work.
6. Implement an employee recognition scheme
Everyone craves validation. Your employees want to feel like someone notices when they’re working hard – both when their efforts directly contribute to business success, and when it’s more of an abstract connection (because it’s easier for sales teams to point to positive outcomes, for example).
Find meaningful, measured, and public ways of recognising your employees’ hard work – whether in the form of an enthusiastic ‘thank you’, or a token gesture like a gift voucher. 68% of employees say it will impact retention.
7. Introduce new employee engagement initiatives
‘Employee engagement’ is that catch-all which is connected to all the business outcomes you care about. And that includes retention – because disengaged employees will leave.
Run another engagement survey, see how you’re measuring, and use the feedback to guide your next initiatives. With our platform, that’s easy – as our smarter surveys and industry-leading technology will get you real insights about your employees.
How to use our platform to prioritise actions
There’s no one way to improve retention rates. There’s 1000s of things you could do to encourage employees to stay – so your real task is prioritising what you should do. Here’s how:
- Listen with Qlearsite: send a survey (we’d recommend our Engagement or Experience survey, or the full Org Fit scan)
- Spot the top concerns: thanks to our platform’s next-level tech, you’ll be shown the most common topics people discuss – and whether that’s in a positive or negative way
- Read into the feedback: whether it’s ‘leadership’ or ‘tools’, you can get more context by investigating the written comments
- Decide & share actions: from these insights, you can identify what to do next – and share the results easily, with our report-building tool
If you’re interested in understanding and improving retention, you can start using our platform for free. Get started today, and make employee retention an organisational strength.