What is the most expensive aspect of your team? Letting any of its members go. If your team is performing amazingly and you have to face one of its members’ leave, the first thing that comes to your mind is “why?!”. However, it is too late do something about it. It’s time to search for a new team member, get the training ready, raise the team’s morale and get back on track.
High performing and solid teams stay together for the long run, otherwise, it is very complicated to compete in any market. Less than 30 percent of U.S. employees admit they are loyal to their company. Greater retention contributes to uplift individuals’ and teams’ performance.
Let us recommend you to follow four basic rules you can apply to retain talent in your company:
1. Ask your team to tell you what they want
How much time do you spend with your team? When was the last time you sat down with them face-to-face? The average amount of time a manager actually spends with his or her team is only about 25% of the full working day. How can you get to know your people better? One simple and inexpensive tool is having everyone taking the 4 Quadrant Behavior Style or DISC assessment, discuss the outcomes, and keep using the findings overtime to work on reducing the communication gaps.
2. Your team does not serve you, you serve the team
Use management by walking around to keep building relationships and getting to know people better. When relationships between managers and staff are closer and solid, people stay longer.
You have to provide effective leadership and supervision. If you feel you don’t have the skills to manage a team, bear in mind that many organizations promote people from within who are technically skilled but have never been trained on people skills such as communication or building work relationships. You need to allocate resources to bring your management skills up through ongoing training, coaching and mentoring.
3. Provide and encourage feedback and recognition
Feedback is a two-way street. What kind of mechanisms and practices does your organization currently have or need to implement to ensure evaluation and feedback are done effectively and regularly? While managers need to prioritize doing this, they also need to be trained on how to evaluate, how to give feedback in a way that does not lower morale but is received in the spirit of positive growth.
But feedback should not just be top-down. All employees have points of view. Lots of useful feedback remains uncovered because managers don’t ask for reviews about their own performance. When employees are given a voice that is heard, they feel an actual part of the organization’s success. That voice will inspire your better employees to stay.
4. Offer professional development
First, it makes sense for your organization to spend money on training and coaching. Leaving growth to all too usual learning is haphazard and often ineffective. Employees are being trained by other employees who also learned on the job and were trained by those who learned on the job, and so on. Adding effective skill and insight- based classes upscales the level of effectiveness and will give you measurable ROI.
Secondly, employees who get professional growth and learning as prized values will appreciate the support you are investing in them. That helps building their loyalty to the organization.
A third ingredient is helping your team members define a career journey (ideally, one that is available within your organization), so the choices of training programs are in line with defined goals.
The bottom line is that retention strategies pay for themselves when compared with the cost of a turnover. It is simply common sense and great fiscal management to review how you are approaching talent retention.