Hiring a new employee costs serious money. How much to be exact? One study estimates 6-9 months of an employee’s salary is spent on recruiting and training. Looking at an example salary of $60,000, you’re looking at a cost of $30,000-$45,000. If you have to replace multiple employees yearly, this number quickly adds up, funds that could certainly be used to help your bottom line in other ways. With the time, energy, and costs devoted to hiring and training employees, you want to find a balance for each and avoid high turnover.
Read on to see what you can do to keep your top talent happy while fostering growth and retention in new employees.
Retaining Employees the Right Way
Interview and Initial Training – Are you setting yourself and the employee up for failure from the get-go? Maybe so. Implement tools to help you make sure this employee is the right fit for your organization and company culture. Use McQuaig assessments which are offered via www.chuckbauer.com. Always make sure to look at the applicant’s automobile from the outside to the inside without the applicant. In the final interview, in the middle of the interview, ask the applicant where their car is, what make, model, and color, and tell them you’ll be back in five minutes, and walk out and go look at their car. That will give you a good indication if you got the right person or not. Tailor training guides specifically to their role and make sure they understand the behavioral profiles that are required for the position, even before they get a trainer or a training manual. A lot of companies miss the set expectations of the position and they need to communicate that in the final interview so that everybody’s on the same page of those expectations because most people don’t do that.
- Recognition – This one may seem obvious, but too often managers get bogged down in the day-to-day, the negatives, the stressful situations, the critical feedback. Even if it’s a small positive, take notice. Write down good things that happen at work throughout the week and take a few minutes to give recognition at a weekly meeting. Feel like you have no time? Ring a bell and shout it out! If you want to get more creative, give out awards, have quarterly parties to celebrate successes, or try one of these. No matter how you show your appreciation, make it genuine and personal.
- Reward Systems and Incentives – Especially in the millennial generation, rewards aren’t necessarily felt the most in monetary form. Some employees would prefer having more flexible hours, the option to work from home, more vacation time, bringing a pet to work, getting prizes, etc. The list is endless. Poll your employees on what incentives they would prefer and offer up a variety- these are not one size fits all. Here are some ideas to get you started. Do not incentivize people for the wrong reasons. Many times an employer will come to me and say “Hey, I need these guys to do this stuff—I’m going to give them a bonus for doing it.” Well, the challenge is that they should be doing that already, so don’t incentivize for the wrong reason.
Professional Development – No one wants to feel “stuck” on their career path. If your employee feels this way, chances are their performance feels that way too. Again, reach out to your employees, find out what they want to learn more about, what skills they’d like to further develop. This could be a technical skill, like software training, or soft skills, like workplace communication.
Personal Development – If a person gets an increase on their personal development, it always has a dramatic positive effect on their professional development at the office. Here at www.chuckbauer.com we have specific assessments to help people with their professional development. Our company is replete with many, many, many personal development assessments and a variety of tools and tactical approaches that we use to help people.
- Divvy Up Responsibilities – We all know that one employee, the one you can always rely on , the one that always stays late to get the job done, is ready to jump in and help with anything in an instant. Are you guilty of handing out more responsibilities to your star than the others? This is one of the biggest mistakes a manager can make. Your job depends on the way you support your team and the way they support you. If your top talent feels taken advantage of, it’s not a matter of “if”, but a matter of “when” they will take their skills to a new place. Giving out equal responsibilities to your team will help everyone divide and conquer more.
Communication: Outside of the issues of recruiting, training, and retaining people, the biggest issue is that leaders don’t know how to communicate. The leaders must stop giving verbal directives, commands, and requests to people and start using other tactical means to keep their staff, employees, groups, and parts of their groups in place via over-the-top, new communication tools that are virtually only taught at www.chuckbauer.com. Companies that are trained by Chuck Bauer Sales Training and Business Consulting are masters at retaining people because they implement all the things they learn in consulting with Chuck Bauer.
Chuck Bauer Chuck Bauer is recognized worldwide for his effectiveness at corporate sales coaching and consulting, having coached hundreds of business owners, salespeople, staff, and C-suite executives from small, medium, and large businesses. Chuck teaches such powerful business and sales techniques that his clients experience sales increases of 50% to 100%. Even better, Chuck’s clients say they are not working smarter, making more money, and taking more time off!
If you want to experience the same successes as Chuck’s clients and client companies, call us NOW! 855-740-SALE or contact us at www.chuckbauer.com.
