With one in three Aussies leaving their job within the first two years, is your brokerage doing enough to keep you on board? Plus, if you’re the principal, here are five top tips to retain your best talent – without breaking the bank.
Do you feel like your efforts are appreciated at work? If you’re running your own shop, what are you doing to keep your best talent on board?
According to a recent Hays survey about one in three Australians will leave their employer in the first one to two years, suggesting that more could be done on the talent retention front.
“A strategy for retaining your top talent and curbing the turnover of staff has many positive outcomes for a business,” said Hays Banking director Jane McNeill. “Firstly, it can help to prevent the cost of unexpectedly having to replace good staff.
“While it is difficult to fully calculate the cost of turnover it can often equate to 25 per cent of the average employee salary – and this is a conservative estimate.
“When an employee leaves there is the loss of not only valuable industry knowledge which can contribute to your businesses’ future success, but knowledge about your company, your customers, current projects and past history, which can take a long time to regain.”
Here are Hays’ top five tips for staff retention. Does your brokerage tick these boxes?
1. Managing performance
This is the key to an employer’s retention strategy. Performance reviews are a simple but essential process which should take place regularly and managers need to be committed to the practice. Formal performance feedback is also an excellent opportunity to ensure talent is engaged, but remember to make sure the system is user friendly for everyone involved. And be sure to communicate clearly with employees. Setting clear objectives and deadlines will mean your employees can be comfortable knowing what is expected and when they should deliver it.
2. Your leaders
Front line managers are the key to retention, so you should definitely evaluate the quality of yours. Remember, people join companies and leave people. Your managers are at the coal face. They should be good at motivating and inspiring their team members, managing performance - good and bad, and setting useful goals. They also need to provide useful performance feedback, including positive reinforcement or suggesting solutions when things have not gone well. So, employers may also need to look at what their organisation does to develop its managers as part of their retention strategy.
3. Good relationships
If an employee has good relationships at work they are more likely to stay with a company and feel engaged with their work. So employers need to focus on how they understand, communicate and build good relationships with their employees. It’s a good idea to ask employees for their opinion on key engagement factors such as career progression and performance feedback through employee opinion surveys, online forums or regular reviews. And it is best not to assume anything about an employee’s career path as there can be many factors at play – just maintain open and honest communication to find out what your employees’ goals are.
4. Career pathways
Employees can become stale and bored without the proper career development – and this is often a reason why candidates look elsewhere for work. As different organisations have different parameters within which they must work, career development does not always mean promotion, although it certainly can. Can you instead offer additional responsibility, or the opportunity to supervise other employees? Could an employee coach and train others, manage projects or chair meetings?
5. Training and development
Courses aren’t always what training and development is about, nor do they have to take place in a formal classroom. Mentorships are a useful retention tool and can also be used to pass on corporate insight to other employees. One-on-one training and taking on additional duties can also be just as effective. Investing in your employees’ skills development allows them to be the best they can be, which has obvious rewards for both them and you.
