10+ Top tips on how you can increase your employee retention from a team level.

Posted April 6, 2022

In Blog, Company Culture, Employee Engagement, Opinions

From my own research over the past few months. Reading over 10 books. And around 150 articles. All on employee engagement and things our clients can do to keep their employees. And reduce employee churn – as well as use employee engagement platforms like Your FLOCK.

I have seen certain themes emerge.

This is important as:

ALL companies (especially those in the knowledge worker sectors) need to keep an eye on their staff because they are the core of the entire business. Employees, especially top performers, have a lot of choices in today’s job market. And they can choose to work somewhere else at the drop of a hat. If you want them to improve their performance. And stay longer. And do their best and stay engaged with your company.

Then you need to treat them right.

Changing jobs isn’t all about the money either.

As 74 percent of younger employees would accept a pay cut for a chance to work at their ideal job. And 23 percent of those seeking a job wouldn’t need a pay increase to take a new position.

But it’s not just people leaving their job.

It’s being disengaged in the first place. This cost not just the companies involved money and time. It costs the whole of society. As…

“According to a study on workplace engagement in the U.S alone. Disengaged employees cost organisations around $450-550 billion each year.”

Disengaged workers take less responsibility and ownership of their attitude, behaviour, and motivation. And drain overall productivity. Yet, what is surprising to me when it comes to employee engagement. Is that more than 80% of the actions. That you can take to increase employee happiness, employee engagement and employee retention DO NOT cost money. Rather than the mindset of the team leader or manager. It’s what they do that counts.

These actions from the team leader that don’t cost anything more than time are things like:

Communicating with the team – even over communicating in times of covid. With around 22% of the mentions and this relates to many of the below ones too.
Getting to know them – as individuals and team members.With around 15% of the mentions.
Recognising the work they do. With around 14% of the mentions.
Praising them for work well done. With around 13% of the mentions.
Listening to their input and feedback. With around 12% of the mentions.
Telling them the BIG Picture. Which I know personally, as a boss myself, isn’t always possible but it’s always appreciated with 11% of the mentions.
Being transparent with them, which is linked to trust and is around 8% of the mentions.
And showing them that they have a career pathway had only 4% of the mentions.

For each of these actions – there is a TIME implication and a cost for the business. As this is the team leader or manager’s TIME.

BUT… Your Time Costs Money.

If we consider this into the equation whilst using Your FLOCK as our example. The time costs of each of the above can be as little as £500 per person per year – to as much as £1500 per person. If you consider onboarding, 1-2-1’s, monthly reviews and quarterly reviews.

Using something like YourFLOCK brings down this cost considerably as it saves team leaders and managers time. By doing fortnightly feedback reviews based on values. The team leader sees how they are doing each month. This also helps with their own communication with the team.

As the top action mentioned was communication. And the bottom one was career pathway and progression. Yet when I speak to bosses of companies. They think people leave because of a lack of career progression and the money.

Recognition.

Another one I recognise. As it’s one of the core value options for our team engagement platform Your FLOCK – is recognition.

Which itself is a great way of engaging employees even if it is not a core value.

As recognition can serve as a type of reward.

Encouraging employees to continue to do their best to receive more praise.

“90% of employees state that recognition motivates them to work harder, creating a boost in engagement.”

Whether it’s praise or recognition, or being transparent, or telling them the big picture. The key issue is actually communication.

Which is mentioned 5 times as much. As a lack of career progression. As the reason to leave or why someone is disengaged at work.

Communicate MORE. Or just in a better way?

The problem is that leaders are not seen to be good communicators. A recent Interact/Harris Poll shows that 91% of the surveyed employees think that their leaders lack communication skills. What’s more almost 1 in 3 employees don’t trust their employers. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer.

This trust is something that can’t be bought.

But you can influence someone staying in your business. Be that a law firm or legal practice with some things that DO cost money. As well as paying them more. Which many legal firms are considering (as my co founder has pointed out. In this blog post here….)

Whilst , I blogged about how Netflix are renowned for doing a number of things – that DO cost money as well. And yet these are mentioned only 20% of the time in the research we have compiled. And so I do wonder whether they are as important. As the top tips above.

The actions from the team leader that COST money are things like:

Building new offices or revamping old ones. Mentioned 20% of the time. And might be why those that have paid for massive offices like Google want people to return to the office.
Making outside office events. Which is a classic and where team building and team bonding events come from. But also include the end of team drinks etc. And these are mentioned 20% of the time.
Buying employees more advanced computers / kit is mentioned around 12% of the time.
Giving them health perks like gym memberships. Also mentioned 12% of the time.
Allowing them more life work balance. Mentioned 12% of the time.
Providing food at the office for free. Mentioned 8% of the time.
More Holidays and more holidays paid off like for birthdays. Which is also mentioned 8% of the time.
Giving them more money and a raise. Which is mentioned 8% of the time. But often considered by managers and recruiters as the main reason WHY people leave a company.

So spending money CAN help your retention rates. With each of the above costing anything from £500 to £5000 depending on the action.

For example…. We worked out here at Your FLOCK.

If we were to buy a new office space. With the kinds of things and space expected post covid. Then there would be a cost attached to that. Not just in the yearly cost but also the management time to source it etc.

Each of these costs is going to differ for each business. But we worked out the following.

New offices would cost us around £2025 a year per person.
To pay for outside of office events / “get togethers” would be around £1025 (including time to organise)
More computer equipment or new things comes in around £775 but this is not a year.
Health perks and things like gym memberships and insurance. £575 a year.
Life work balance and time off when wanted like Netflix around £525 a year as well.
Free food at the office including time to organise that would be £500 a year per person.
Holidays – depending on the number – but we thought a couple of days extra so £500.
And a 5 – 7% pay raise depends on the wage but on average that might be £2500 to £5000.

So which one of the above do you feel has the biggest impact on your employees. We know from research that new office space and the design of that can be key as:

“Workers who freely move about the workplace are 1.3x more engaged. Those with space to connect with coworkers are 1.5x more engaged.”

But we also know this can backfire as while some staff love an open floor plan, privacy has its perks. According to new research, 42% of workers said they would consider leaving their current job for a job with more privacy. And 33% would leave for an office with a door.

So what is a manager to do? What should business owners do to help their teams stay together more? Of course, we would say use technology like Your FLOCK. As we built our team engagement platform. Especially to help increase your employee engagement and retention levels.

Your FLOCK helps “time poor” managers communicate with their employees and team members. Giving the employees a voice and the team leaders the feedback they need to improve.

It’s a well-known fact that keeping your employees happy and engaged tends to lead to better results for companies. Greater productivity, lower staff turnover rates, higher profits and so on. But it can be hard to be motivated when you’re not aligned with your work or don’t feel valued as an employee.

Hopefully, the above actions give you some food for thought. Around how you can increase employee engagement and retention in your organisation. Not just employee engagement surveys but other things too.

If you would like to talk to Your FLOCK about our Team Togetherness Programme. A 6 month intervention that is proven to help increase employee retention in law firms by more than 27%.

Then get in touch with Michal on [email protected]

Remember…

Support your people and they will support you.

Overall, 91% of employees that believe leadership supports them are motivated to do their best on the job. Only 38% of workers who aren’t supported by leadership feel the same.**