The six ways to R-E-T-A-I-N good employees

Good employees are important to the success of an organization. Once rightly remarked by Mary Kay Ash “People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It’s doesn’t make any difference whether the company’s product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.” Therefore, it is of utmost important that right type of persons is selected for the organization in the first place and keep those members of staff that organization wants to keep. It’s a fact that companies are built by people, and the best people build the best and most profitable companies. So failing to do anything about staff retention could be very expensive and impact organization productivity, performance, profitability and customer satisfaction. There are many different factors contribute to staff leaving or staying other but if you understand the reasons for leaving  and have a plan to make them stay . Keeping staff is a critical and challenging. Here are the simple six ways to R-E-T-A-I-N good employees.

1. Respect:

Respect should be the first and foremost thing you give to your employee to retain them. The strongest long term relationships and commitment are built on mutual respect. Respect means every individual is valued for their uniqueness, talent, good qualities, knowledge, skills, competencies and creativity they bring to work every day and to realize their full potential in helping your company and each other succeed. Once Bill Bradley said “Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it”.  Respectful workplace offers employee motivation and helps in employee retention .Therefore respect for people, caring and showing concern for employees is the key to retain employee for long term otherwise good employees do not stay put.

2. Engage

Second important way to retain employee is to engage them and create positive emotional work environment. People leaders play vital role in satisfying the employee need and desires by providing meaningful, exciting, interesting, and challenging task. Leveraging their strengths and provide opportunities for achievement, development and help them to drive satisfaction and happiness by recognizing their good work. Engaged employees retain in the organization for long time and generate revenues and gives competitive advantage. Once Zig Ziglar commented “A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere”. So providing them challenging task to engage and empower them is critical to retain good employees else employee look for job change

3. Trust

Third important way to retain employee is to build trust once Warren Buffett said "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." So it’s so important that leader should be careful, sincere, genuine, honest, open, transparent, and consistent in any interactions and committed, show sincere interest in employee’s well-being. As rightly remarked, by Brian Tracy “The glue that holds all relationships together--including the relationship between the leader and the led--is trust, and trust is based on integrity.” and Harvey Mackay also commented “Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.” So fostering trust and transparency is crucial to retain good employees otherwise employees switch over to other organizations

4. Appreciate

Fourth important way to retain your team is providing timely appreciation, acknowledgment and recognition for their good work. Employees will be committed and highly engaged when they receives the regular recognition and appreciation for the work they performed and stay in the company for longtime. Bob Nelson rightly said, “Take time to appreciate employees and they will reciprocate in a thousand ways”. So it is the responsibility of the manager to monitor the performance of the team and appreciate, acknowledge if employee performs any good work, “Appreciation, acknowledgement and recognition goes a long way as a motivation and retention”.  So appreciate your staff regularly otherwise they look for employment elsewhere.

5. Intervene

Fifth important way to retain employees is to interview and intervene to understand what is there in their minds to take preventive and corrective action. Once Kathryn Minshew said, “Understanding your employee's perspective can go a long way towards increasing productivity and happiness. Therefore Seek employee’s ideas, suggestions, feedback, and comments either formal or informal ways. So after receiving inputs work on them sincerely and seriously to change and improve the organization. Once Steve Jobs said, “If you wanna hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don't stay.”  Therefore right intervention at right time is more important for staff retention.

 6. Nurture 

Last and important way to retain employees is to nurture them to handle higher responsibilities, greater challenges and to move them to next level job. Provide them opportunities to learn new job, skill, tools and develop their competencies to take up new assignments, exciting projects, prepare them for next level roles helps your staff to stay for long time. Once Barbara Ehrenreich said, “Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long-term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable “.So last but not least important way is to retain good employee is to nurture them for career advancement to stay in the organization for long term. Otherwise work become monotonous, employee morale will go down and look for change in their jobs.

 R-E-T-A-I-N Summary

 The survival and success of organization mostly depend upon good staff. Keeping valuable staff can be a source of competitive advantage. The staff retention is critical issue but if you want to keep your best staff then you need to take right actions  viz.,  “Respect employees, Engage employees, Trust employees, Appreciate employees, Intervene employees, Nurture employees, these are the keys to that retain employees “. Once JW Marriott said, “If you take care of your employees they will take care of your customers and your business will take care of itself “ . One thing you also need to accept that some staff will leave and this is not always negative. We can’t stop employees from leaving unless we have a plan to make them stay. So right effort, hard work, commitment, planning and action are very important and above all leader’s and coworker involvement and support can reduce staff attrition and increase stability and retention.