Uncovering the Secret to Employee Retention and Satisfaction in High Turnover Industries
Employee retention and satisfaction are closely linked issues. This is particularly true in industries with high turnover, as they often struggle to keep up with the demands of a highly competitive job market. Especially in these industries (hospitality, restaurant, and construction especially), employee retention and engagement strategies can be difficult to implement. But research shows that certain key metrics can be used to improve employee satisfaction and higher levels of employee retention. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at these metrics and explain how they can be used to create long-term employee engagement and satisfaction in any industry.
Metric #1: Positive Work Environment
When you cultivate a positive work environment, you intentionally create a workplace where employees feel valued, supported, and respected. It also involves setting clear expectations, providing feedback and recognition when employees go above and beyond, and offering rewards for good performance. All of these actions can help to foster an atmosphere of trust and respect amongst employees, which will in turn lead to increased levels of motivation and job satisfaction.
How to measure: Employee engagement surveys conducted on an annual basis can measure positive work environments and provide insights that drive continuous improvement.
Metric #2: Competitive Salaries and Benefits Packages
Competitive compensation is especially important in industries with high turnover rates as it helps to attract and retain the best talent available. Employers should ensure that salaries are competitive within the industry, taking into account location-specific costs of living, as well as offering attractive benefits packages such as health insurance or flexible working arrangements.
How to measure: An employee engagement survey can be tuned to measure satisfaction with pay and benefits. However, you should benchmark your organization against your top talent competition at least once a year.
Metric #3: Fostering Professional Growth Opportunities
Fostering growth opportunities could involve offering formal training programs or mentoring programs to help employees develop their skills and knowledge within their roles. Additionally, employers should look for ways to offer career advancement opportunities such as promotions or cross-functional projects which help to keep employees engaged with their work while also providing them with new challenges.
How to measure: Develop a career path for employees and communicate development resources at a regular cadence. Your employee engagement survey can tell you if employees feel they have enough professional growth opportunities in your organization.
Create an Engaging Culture
Engaging cultures encourage collaboration between team members both within departments and across different teams. This could involve implementing regular relationship-building opportunities. Such activities can help create a sense of unity amongst colleagues which will ultimately lead to increased job satisfaction and productivity levels. Culture goes far beyond team building, though, and completes the sentence, “The way we work around here is…” If the completion of that sentence does not align with your company’s mission and vision, you have some cultural work to do.
How to measure: Your employee engagement survey can be tuned to measure the expression of your culture again your organization’s mission, vision, and values. You can also measure if your culture is producing a climate that is anabolic (positive emotions) or catabolic (negative emotions).
Utilize Technology for Collaboration
Utilizing technology can enhance collaboration and communication between teams. Utilizing video conferencing software, project management tools such as Trello or Asana, or cloud-based file-sharing services such as Google Drive can all help streamline processes by making it easier for teams to collaborate on projects remotely without having face-to-face meetings every time there’s an issue that needs resolving.
How to measure: The employee engagement survey can measure comfort, discomfort, and utilization or non-utilization of software. However, you should also conduct a technology audit to assure adoption across purchased systems. A gap analysis between desired and actual usage can help
Create Retention Incentives
Companies should strive to reward long-term staff members who have consistently provided value by offering raises or bonuses whenever possible to show appreciation for their hard work over the years. Furthermore, employers should aim to provide flexible working arrangements including telecommuting options so that they can accommodate changing life circumstances among staff members whilst still ensuring that they remain productive throughout any period of transition in their personal lives such as parenthood or caregiving duties for elderly relatives, and so on.
How to measure: The impact of a retention incentive can only be measured with a pilot test. A qualified consultant can help you take the pre-metrics and post-metrics of the test as well as help you with a cost-benefit analysis of a retention incentive policy.
Conclusion
By considering these six key metrics when planning employee retention strategies in industries with high turnover rates, employers can set themselves up for success in driving employee satisfaction levels above average levels across the sector whilst also reducing turnover rates over time thus providing long-term stability within their organization’s workforce structure overall.
Additional Strategies include:
- Ensuring all staff members feel valued within the workplace environment
- Instituting positive reinforcement measures such as appreciation events or monetary rewards
- Encouraging collaboration at all levels
- Implementing effective communication tools
- Offering competitive wages and benefits
- Providing ongoing training & development opportunities
- Exploring alternative work arrangements
By doing this, employers will be able not only to retain current staff members but also to create highly satisfied ones too! If you need help with this, go to www.whatworksconsultants.com and schedule a FREE CONSULTATION. We would love to help you engage and satisfy your teams.
References
- Research on employee retention and satisfaction in high turnover industries – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13678868.2018.1448295
- The importance of a positive work environment for employee satisfaction and retention – https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/the-importance-of-a-positive-work-environment.aspx
- The impact of competitive salaries and benefits on employee retention – https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-to-hold-on-to-your-high-performers
- The role of professional growth opportunities in employee retention – https://www.forbes.com/sites/alankohll/2019/04/22/the-key-to-employee-retention-is-professional-growth-opportunities/?sh=6d7a400770ba
- The importance of culture in employee engagement and satisfaction – https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236927/culture-important-employee-engagement.aspx
- Utilizing technology for collaboration and communication between teams – https://www.cio.com/article/2383123/collaboration-software/collaboration-