How to retain employees

Psychotherapist Teodora Ghiur from SupportRoom describes Employee retention as company’s ability to retain its employees and prevent high turnover. It refers to policies and strategies that allow employees to stay at the company for a long time.

Employee retention is a complex subject and can be difficult to implement in daily corporate life. Nowadays, employee retention is a bigger challenge than ever. As a result, this topic gets more attention from the top management than before. Gladly, there are a lot of methods for retaining employees. However, the diversity of retention programs is not solely a good sign. It mostly shows how complex the issue is and how many different techniques we need to apply to ensure that good employees stay in the company.

When we are talking about employee retention, we are trying to understand why employees quit and how we can manage this process. Here are the major challenges that we face in terms of employee retention:

• Better job opportunities on the market
• Hiring unsuitable candidates
• Lack of motivation
• Workplace anxiety
• Different job expectations
• Salary dissatisfaction

Given these difficulties in retaining employees, companies should consider alternatives that would encourage talent to stay within an organisation. These include:

1. Offering mental health support and screening

Employee therapy support should no longer be seen as an optional tool in the workplace, but rather as a compulsory measure that prevents sickness and absenteeism. Companies can contact mental health providers that provide online therapy and mental health support.

These mental health providers can offer tools and resources that can maintain workplace wellbeing, such as screening questionnaires for mental illnesses, self-help tools, therapy sessions, and overall wellness support.

2. Having a recognition programme

Some ways in which organisations can implement recognition are:

• Offering promotions and new titles
• One-on-one thank you meetings
• Offering employees rewards, bonuses, raises, and gifts
• Sending congratulatory emails
• Employee of the month programmes

3. Offering flexible work opportunities

Allowing employees to work from home can improve their work-life balance, decrease stress levels, and enhance productivity. People feel more in control of their environment when they have the opportunity to choose between commuting to their job or turning their living rooms into an office. Besides, employees feel trusted and appreciated when their employer knows they can deliver the same results when working by themselves, which in turn increases the relationship with the workplace. This would increase their chances to remain in an organisation that trusts them to work from anywhere.