Proven talent retention strategies that ensure a long-term workforce

Employee attrition cost is becoming an increasingly concerning factor that every organization irrespective of its size are working on to improve. According to a HubSpot report, the loss in productivity cost due to employee turnover for U.S. businesses is 1.8 trillion annually. Perhaps employee turnover cost encompasses expenditures such as recruitment cost, onboarding cost, training cost.

Above all, events such as the Great Resignation had affected several businesses by creating an unexpected hike in employee turnover cost that demands the incorporation of smart talent retention strategies. Moreover, a robust employee retention program is becoming a key deciding factor in a competitive talent market. Now, let’s learn how to reduce employee attrition rate and retain top talent.

What is talent retention?

Employee retention as a process refers to an organization’s ability to retain the acquired talent. There are several strategies that enable and enhance employee retention. Successful recruiters and leading organizations implement innovative talent retention strategies while hiring, onboarding, and most importantly as a regular employee engagement process.

Top reasons to invest time and effort to retain talent

• Improves employee satisfaction
• Enables the overall growth of the business
• Improves hiring success rate 
• Minimizes employee attrition cost
• Makes the hiring budget more predictable
• Minimizes the overall hiring cost
• Reduces overall hiring turnaround time
• Helps strengthen the employer branding

According to a study, the average cost to replace a tech employee costs 100 to 150% of the employee’s salary and this shoots up to ~213% for executive positions.

Also, the time to fill a job vacancy for an organization might take one to four months depending on the requirements and the expertise of their hiring team. Here each and every minute spent on finding and hiring candidates is resource intensive, and therefore recruiters try to reduce hiring time. Now, let’s deep dive into the trending talent retention strategies implemented by leading tech organizations.

Top 7 employee retention strategies

1. Implement talent retention during the hiring process

Talent retention has to initiate right from the start of the hiring process. This is because an organizations’ brand as an employer is assessed right from the application process till the offboarding process and all of this creates an impact on the overall candidate experience. For instance, a complex application process might dissuade most of the applicants from completing the application process which will finally result in less applicants per job opening resulting in delays in the hiring goal and increased candidate sourcing cost.

2. Enhance talent retention during onboarding and probation period

Onboarding and the probation periods are the most crucial time-period both for the employers as well as the selected candidates as rejections during this time is going to be statistically high according to several reports. Also, during this time the company will be investing its human resources, money, and effort to train and absorb the selected candidates into the organization with a goal to convert them into a longstanding culturally fitting workforce. Here it is important to make the onboarding and probation time smooth and as productive as possible.

3. Devise strong employee engagement programs

One of the most important things to factor in is training and skill upgradation program for employees within the organization. This helps employees acquire new skills as well as sharpen their existing skills thereby making them eligible for promotions, handling new roles, switch internally within teams, and handle varied responsibilities.

Programs such as creates a sense of belongingness to the employees where they can refer potential candidates from their known circle. Here the willingness of your employees referring candidates from their known circle provides an indication of their satisfaction with the work culture and they also get rewarded on successful referrals.

4. Work culture and flexibility

The work culture is the second most important key deciding factor for talents to choose working with your organization. For any employee a sense of belongingness in his or her workplace is the most expected aspect. For instance, publishing diversity reports and displaying the workplace diversity to the outside world is a key aspect that ensures a discrimination free healthy work place.

It is also important to note that aspects such as work culture are subjective and the expectation changes according to the ever-evolving trends such as provision for work from home and hybrid work model.

5. Rewards and Recognition

Every recognition and reward irrespective of whether they are small or big has the potential to boost the morale of the employees. It is important to offer employees, the required scope to outperform by allowing them in decision-making and providing autonomy. This will bestow them with a sense of ownership which in turn strengthens the workforce. In short, a motivated workforce will always give better performance.

Apart from promotions in the job hierarchy and annual salary hikes, companies also offer the following employee rewards that are well known to keep the workforce motivated.

• Monthly or quarterly star performer awards
• Employee referral rewards
• Lead generation incentives

6. Implement the right technology

Technology is an inevitable aspect of modern-day recruitment. There are tools and technology that assist, catalyze, and simplify each and every step of a typical hiring process. Here it is very important to identify and implement those tools and techniques that are best suited for a specific hiring requirement. Importantly technology enables easy and a trackable implementation of talent retention strategies.

There are tools that streamline sending emails and notifications by bulk activation. The major interpersonal communication includes- candidate and employee communication, running employee engagement campaigns, and automating redundant communication processes. Thus, it frees up the HR team’s time by offering them more time and scope to concentrate on employee well-being which automatically reflect on employee retention.

7. The right combination of competitive remuneration and perks

It is an undeniable fact that candidates accepting or rejecting a job offer is highly governed by the renumeration and perks offered. As a sequel to this, employees often receive job offers from competitors which drives them to leave your organization. Also, the resource incurred per new hire is a costly affair and on top of that higher attrition rates can unpredictably increase an organization’s hiring cost. Therefore, in order to retain talents within and also to keep the hiring budget predictable, a consistent effort to retain your talent becomes a must. This can be enabled by offering a fair and enticing salary hikes, incentives, and employee benefits based on the respective employees’ achievements on a timely basis.

Final Takeaways

Often there could also be a few minor aspects that result in employee satisfaction or dissatisfaction. It is undoubtedly a win-win situation to make employees feel valued and empowered as this would directly reflect on their performance resulting in the overall success of the organization.

Implementing a winning talent retention strategy promotes creative space and makes the office hours less synonymous with a monotonous work culture. Apart from this it is also important to identify your employee’s strength and weaknesses in order to utilize them efficiently so that they tend to stay integrated in your company ecosystem for a longer time.

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