Retaining talented workers is key—especially in a competitive, remote work environment. It’s not enough to recruit top talent, you have to engage and retain employees. Sustaining a talented team can be a difficult task without the proper strategies put in place. However, it is definitely worth the time and costs.
Employee turnover costs alone can amount to as much as double the employee’s salary. Turnover doesn’t just impact your bottom line, it also has deep impacts on your company’s culture and can push employees to seek other opportunities.
The Great Resignation left companies reeling in an effort to retain key employees. The Washington Post noted that many employees quit their jobs during the pandemic for a more competitive salary, healthy work life balance, and to find flexible, remote work options. While the disruption of the pandemic sent many industries spiraling, the tech industry remains poised to succeed in the changing workplace.
Employee retention strategies are more essential now than ever. Retention strategies enhance company culture, employee engagement, morale, and employee satisfaction. We have created a simple guide of four tried and true talent retention strategies that help reduce employee turnover.
1) INVEST IN GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
The tech industry is constantly evolving, and your employees need the opportunity for professional development to keep up. One of the best employee retention strategies you can implement is to provide your employees with the support and resources they need for career development.
Investing in internal learning opportunities, promoting industry events, and encouraging employees to seek out external learning opportunities helps employees retain skills and upskill in other areas.
Upskill your talent
Upskilling is by no means a new idea, but it does have a new sense of urgency. Demand has far outpaced supply, and upskilling is a far more effective tool to fill in current skills gaps within your organization.
Consider what methods to upskill will work best for you and your team. Does internal self-service training fit with your business needs or does investing in long-term growth of your employee matter most with cross-functional assignments.
Self-Service Training
Self-service training provides your employees the chance to engage in upskilling through self-service training modules that cover any number of topics from Agile Development, to cybersecurity, web applications, or anything else you can dream of.
Cross-functional Training
Cross-functional training allows employees to engage in more hands-on training for career development and advancement. Cross training is a fantastic opportunity to use mentorship as a mode of training for your employees. Allow your employees to drive the process and pursue avenues for career and organizational advancement.
Be mindful to avoid a one-size fits all approach to upskilling your workforce. Instead, think of the needs and skills of your employees and talk with them directly to determine where and how they would like to grow. Investing in your employees will increase employee morale and drive employee retention.
Not only do learning opportunities show your team that you are committed to their development, but it enables your team members to perform their job well. By investing in an employee’s growth, you create a sense of care and purpose. Your employees work and creativity will excel in environments that pour into their skills and development.
Tuition costs are often a barrier for employees seeking external learning opportunities, so we recommend providing tuition reimbursement for employees, whether that be for formal education, online courses, or industry-specific conferences. Despite the initial overhead costs, trained employees will bring back skills and abilities that will benefit the company overall.
Tech teams are more than technology
Don’t limit learning to technical skills. The Harvard Business Review concludes a three-pronged approach to learning is essential in the new, fast-paced era of tech and automation. Invest in growing your employees’ technical skills, digital skills, and soft skills. Empathy and communication help employees navigate the development process and anticipate needs and hiccups just as much as their technical skills do.
The tech industry is already experiencing a crisis of talent attrition with major skill gaps apparent across the industry. By investing in the development and education of your employees, you not only retain talented employees, you also invest in the success of your own company.
2) PROVIDE MENTORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
Mentorship is also great for promoting growth in your employees. Mentorship engages employees—especially in a remote work environment—by encouraging, supporting, and training new hires and long-term employees alike. In the fast-paced world of tech, it can be difficult to engage and retrain new hires and to connect them with other employees.
Providing your team members with mentors is a quick way to engage a new hire and key talent. Mentors can guide a new hire through the learning process, immerse employees in the company culture, motivate employees, and encourage creativity.
Teaching your employees will open the door to talent and allow your current staff to grow and thrive. Educational opportunities will attract new talent and cultivate overall employee satisfaction.
3) PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
McKinsey and company recently conducted a survey of over 1,500 global senior executive. Of those surveyed, 87% say their companies are not prepared to fill the gaps left by the Great Resignation. With top talent leaving due to unmet needs, it is time to invest heavily into employee engagement strategies.
Employee engagement is so much more than an appealing benefits package and other monetary benefits. It boils down to promoting a healthy work life balance and listening to employee feedback.
Engagement begins with feedback
Take some time to engage with your employees by taking regular feedback on their goals, progress, and road blocks. You can increase employee engagement simply by taking some time to listen and provide flexibility for your employees to meet their goals in the workplace.
Many employees leave because their expectations aren’t met and the company culture is not promoting a healthy work life balance.
While great health insurance, wellness programs, and ways to increase an employee’s personal finances don’t hurt retention, these aspects alone don’t engage employees. Ask your employees directly what they need. Remote employees can often be left feeling disconnected and disengaged.
Spending some time with co-workers or mentors in non-work related capacities can help boost corporate culture. Find ways to celebrate their wins in and out of the office. Some ideas are sending swag, giving gifts for anniversaries and birthdays, and hosting social events to foster respect and show you are about work life balance.
4) LEVERAGE DIFFERENT TOOLS FOR COLLABORATION
In any remote workspace, it is vital to ensure you have plenty of channels for communication. This is especially true for remote tech teams who need to be able to regularly collaborate.
You need to provide your team with ample, effective tools to stay on the same page in order to effectively complete a stand out project in a timely manner. Clear and effective communication is key collaboration.
We suggest that you maintain formal and informal channels to ensure your business is conducted effectively and your employees maintain strong relationships. Consider including communication tools such as Teams, Slack, or Troop to encourage communication between teams and team members.
Collaboration doesn’t end with direct communication. It is important to consider how you keep your team on the same page throughout your process. Using shared calendars, project management tools, file sharing, and whiteboards are key. Asana, Trello, nTask, Google Drive, Outlook’s collaboration features, and other project management tools are a great place to start.
It’s easy to feel like we are floating on an island in remote work environments. Ensuring your team has strong collaboration tools will help mitigate any blind spots or missed deadlines.
Remain Agile
Talented employees recognize their worth and so should you. Your employees expect some level of respect and autonomy with their work. Flexibility is key to strengthening your workplace culture and retaining employees because it creates a sense of ownership and joy in their work.
Agility is more than agile tech
Creating an agile workplace, one that responds to the changing needs of its team, means creating an intentional space for your employees to thrive. A flexible workplace does not simply refer to where the work is being done, but how, when, and what.
Consider the needs of your team and clients and focus on how and when your team works best. It is up to organizational leaders to understand both your client’s and business’s needs and create a framework for when and how work must be completed.
Allow flexibility around those parameters in so much as your business and projects allow. Your employees will respond to the focus on connection, innovation, and collaboration.
Creating an agile workplace will help in reducing employee turnover. Flexibility makes your organization stand out in the job market and is among one of the best staff retention strategies.
An agile framework creates space for engagement because employees are excited to choose when to tune in on a project so long as they continue to meet deadlines and the project timeline.
Flexibility leads to innovation
As your team becomes familiar with the expectations of the workplace, a flexible framework creates space for your team to innovate. Your team will have time to come up with creative processes and solutions and can dream up ideas for news ways to operate.
Not only does an agile workspace offer flexibility to its team, an agile workspace also teaches the entire organization how to pivot and move with the ever-changing workplace.
You must be clear in setting and communicating expectations and deadlines for your team. However, allowing ownership of ones schedule is a quick way to boost morale and encourage engaged employees.
Focus on culture
If the Great Recession taught us anything, it is that employees leave places where they are not satisfied. Wiley Edge, a talent and reskilling firm, conducted a survey with more than 2,000 young tech professionals and found that corporate culture was to blame for leaving their previous jobs. Culture is especially critical in the work from home environment where an employee can easily leave their job for another.
Create a ‘watercooler community’
Some key areas to build a positive business culture are diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI), promoting and celebrating team successes, and by fostering a ‘watercooler community‘. Termed by CIO and VP of IT at Miami University, a watercooler community focuses on culture. Encourage your team to engage with one another in a community-building manner.
Encourage your team to have fun and care for one another. Some easy ways to do so are to encourage the use of a just for fun Teams or Slack channel where co-workers can talk about their family members and personal lives. A healthy, fulfilled workplace brings out the best talent.
Culture is broadly defined as the “ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or group” which means it’s important to look into the small daily occurrences and how they may impact your company.
Encourage your team leaders to spend time investing in the culture of their individual teams. Leadership is a commonly sited reason for employee turnover. Collaborate on ways for your leaders and managers to inspire open communication and mentorship opportunities among their teams. Culture and moral will soar.
FIND WAYS TO CELEBRATE AND PROMOTE SUCCESSES
Another key employee retention strategy is to promote and celebrate your employees successes. Recognition programs help to create engagement and retain employees. Recognizing employees can be difficult, however, when you do not share a physical space.
Once you have strong collaboration tools implemented, make sure you have your entire team present and involved in celebrating success within your business. Not only does this elevate your team member themselves, it also works to enhance your company culture.
While recognition is an effective retention strategy that can work to motivate the entire team—including disengaged employees—there are a few key mistakes to avoid with employee recognition.
Recognize team wins
Spend time actually getting to know your employees so you can recognize and celebrate their strengths and contributions. Participation trophies actually work against your company’s culture.
Participation trophies often frustrate your key talent who work diligently each day. Moreover, a simple participation trophy tells your team that you are not aware of their efforts and successes enough to personalize your praise.
Walk the talk
Corporate culture flows from leadership. Make it a part of your company culture to celebrate one another and recognize talent and wins in all shapes and sizes. Your team will take note and follow suit.
Model the behaviors you want your team to follow. Encourage and empower your team members and invest in developing strong organizational practices.
Be intentional and specific
Be clear and accurate with your recognition. Adding specific detail shows your employees you take note of their hard work and understand how it relates to the company’s success. Praising team members in front of co-workers also helps them become acquainted with one another’s strengths. Doing so will enhance collaboration and build more well-rounded teams.
Set aside meaningful time for recognition
Be sure to set aside specific and meaningful time to celebrate and recognize your team. Time spent celebrating one another will boost morale and employee loyalty. A healthy work environment rewards employees and encourages employee recognition for their wins, big and small alike.
Ensure these moments aren’t sloppily thrown into general meetings. Set aside time to intentionally discuss team wins and to provide personalized praise for your team members talents and successes.
Playing favorites
You will naturally take note of those whom you spend most of your time with in meetings and collaborating on projects. It is up to you to intentionally set aside time to get to know all your team and find a way to log and note the things your team members do well.
Make sure to give credit where credit is due. Playing favorites can hurt your company morale and lead to disengaged employees.
Pigeon hole your employees
Finally, it is essential you have opportunities for new collaboration efforts. It is a good successful business practice to allow employees to collaborate with different teams on a variety of projects. Doing so helps your team members to become acquainted with each other and especially new employees.
Remember, recognition is not just for managers and leaders. Build a strong culture of support with opportunities to recognize others especially on a peer-to-peer basis. Let your team work together to create a supportive workplace.
THINGS TO AVOID
While there are many things you ought to be doing to help with employee retention, there are also things to avoid that are hurting your retention strategies:
- Role ambiguity
- Failing to highlight the bigger picture
- Tapping into your team’s abilities instead of talents
Role ambiguity
Ambiguity can be a great way to encourage creativity, but it is more often a path to confusion and frustration. Leaders must clearly define the role and scope for their team members. Some things to clearly outline are an employee’s responsibilities, expectations, quality of work, and all necessary processes.
Answering these questions for your employees ensures everyone is on the same page and empowers your veteran team members and new employees alike.
Failing to highlight the bigger picture
One of the most important roles for you and your managing team is to make sure the entire organization understands the company’s goals and how they are meant to contribute to them.
Mentorship programs are a great way to make sure everyone on board understands the organization’s values and the bigger picture of what exactly you are all achieving together.
Imagine being asked to complete a series of tasks without a clear understanding of what the company was hoping to achieve and how your tasks fit into getting there. It would create frustration within the task and you would begin to see an uptick in departing employees and disengaged talent.
Tapping into your team’s abilities instead of talents
Not tapping into your team’s key talents could also be detrimental to your employee retention rate. You hire talented employees, right? Spend time working to understand their talents and leverage them. Allowing your employees to work in their talent wheelhouse encourages engagement and joy and will result in quality work.
Encourage your team to select tasks themselves when possible. Doing so encourages ownership and engagement. Consider using performance data to determine who is the best fit for your daily responsibilities and encourage employees to follow their passions when otherwise possible.
RETENTION MADE EASY
Retaining employees can be difficult without the right tools. Use the four key methods outlined to help engage your employees and enhance company culture. Start by spending time reflecting on feedback from your departing employees and utilize their feedback. Their input should help you begin revamping your retention methods.
Afterward, review your growth opportunities. It isn’t as simple as hiring top talent. It takes time and resources to reskill and upskill your talent to help them stay on top of their game. Provide your employees with the chance for internal and external growth opportunities.
Ensure you’re encouraging mentorship for your team. Mentorships drive corporate culture and provide inroads for your employees to advance within your organization rather than seeking advancement elsewhere.
Remember, employee retention is about more than an employee’s salary. Implement processes that cultivate an agile, engaging workplace and promote growth opportunities. Employee retention doesn’t have to be an overly complicated process. Ensure you provide tools for collaboration and promote engagement through frequent and personal communication.
Focus on creating a positive workplace that responds to the needs of your team. Encourage growth and provide clear opportunities for employees to learn and be creative. Retaining remote teams can be hard but with these skills, your team will flourish.