We’re all familiar with the pattern. One employee resigns and, sure enough, a few more soon follow. It’s disruptive to work flow and expensive to replace people. When this happens, it isn’t because that first employee gave others the idea to resign. The problem is that people are not engaged with their work and/or the business. Seeing one person leave was just that last little push they needed to do what they were already thinking of doing.
This is why the time to think about retention is all the time. Not just when it becomes a problem.
The Core of Employee Retention
Retention is really about engagement. If you’re going to get serious about it, you need to change your mindset from “how do we keep people here?” to “how do we get people engaged, happy and fulfilled at work?”
Especially when it comes to hourly employees, many companies default to financial incentives and rewards as a way to keep people motivated. The problem is, that doesn’t work. True, financial incentives may deliver positive short-term results, but long-term, those results often take a negative turn if they aren’t backed up by an engaging and supportive culture.
Retention is all about the long game. It’s about cultivating an entire culture around employee happiness so that, from day one, people feel connected to their work and invested in staying with the organization.
The Core of Engagement
How do you get people engaged? It starts with valuing your employees’ personal and professional development. Yes, your hourly employees are quite literally on the clock, but if your organization views them as whole people rather than blocks on a schedule, that will drive engagement, which leads to higher retention rates.
It goes without saying that retention strategies locked in HR binders aren’t going to accomplish much. Your strategies need to be coordinated company-wide and put into practice by leadership and employees at all levels.
So, yes, find yourself a nice employee retention plan template, read whitepapers from companies that have implemented successful plans, or even hire an advisor to build a plan for you. But, above all, be ready to put your plan into action.
Employee Retention Strategies
So, if our approach to employee retention is to work on engagement, what does that mean in terms of hourly employees? In many ways, the same strategies that work with salaried employees will work with hourly employees as well; especially the strategies relating to communication and recognition. For other strategies, you’ll have to evaluate them in terms of your organizational and operational structure. Some will be applicable to you, others will not. Focus on the ones that work with your structure and keep an open mind about what genuinely can and cannot be tested in your workplace. (And do remember that, like anything else, it’s about testing, evaluating and trying again.)
1. Next level recognition
Recognizing employees matters. For true engagement, take recognition to the next level by calling out the strength, skill or talent your employee has exhibited. It’s good to say something like, “you did a good job handling that difficult customer.” But, to take it to the next level, you might say something like, “I like how you handled that customer. You’re very good at keeping a cool head in difficult situations.” Or even something like, “the way you handled that customer took creativity and strong people skills. Those are great strengths to have.”
2. Get inquisitive
It matters to people that they feel valued. Showing an interest in who they are and what they want is a powerful way to do that. “Where do you see yourself in 5 years” is a common interview question, but that interest in the future shouldn’t stop at the interview. Going back to our example in #1, you might follow up your recognition of an employee’s skill at handling a difficult customer with a question like, “is that a skill you’d be interested in developing further?” or “is that a skill you feel you get to use often in this job?”
3. Invest in employee development
People get bored when they feel like their job has become stagnant. When they’re bored, they’re less likely to be bringing their best to their role and more likely to leave. We often think of employee development in terms of upward movement and that will matter to many employees. However, development can also mean giving employees the tools, training and resources to grow within their role, strengthen their skills, learn new technologies, etc. Personal development is a powerful driver of engagement. Even if there aren’t many opportunities for advancement within your organization, development within roles, or even lateral movement, is still an option.
4. Invest in employee well-being
Many employee retention strategies for 2020 recommend investing in well-being and that trend is more than just a buzzword. The idea is pretty simple. People can’t shut out other parts of their lives. If they are unwell, struggling in their personal lives, having financial issues, if they lack self-esteem, have trouble with interpersonal relationships or are unable to prioritize their physical or mental health, you can bet your quarterly figures that it will show up in their work. It can present as low productivity, low motivation, boredom, frustration, behavioural issues and more. The way to invest in this is through valuable perks like health spending accounts, workshops, coaching and even more out-of-the-box perks like access to a financial planner, registered dietitian or organizational expert. It may cost you a few hundred dollars per employee to offer twice annual sessions with a dietitian, for example, but what you stand to gain in productivity and retention is worth it.
5. Consider (REALLY consider) flexible working hours
The more flexibility or autonomy you can give people over their schedules, the better. There are different models of flextime and telecommuting you can try out, but if the structure of your business requires people to be physically in the office at specific times, you can still aim to be flexible in your scheduling as much as possible, and try to give people some autonomy in terms of choosing shifts. This has to work with your business, so if this just flat out will not work for you, skip it and focus on what you can do. However, if there’s any wiggle room at all, it’s to your benefit to give people as much autonomy as possible over their schedules. It empowers them to take greater control of their own work-life balance and shows that you value them as human beings with personal lives that matter to them. All of this leads to greater overall satisfaction at work.
6. Prioritize communication
Good communication is at the heart of true engagement, but for it to truly feel authentic, supportive and open to your employees, you need to be prepared to get into the tough stuff, and to listen to the tough stuff, without judgement. Most work cultures don’t actively welcome conflict because… well… people don’t like conflict! However, when small problems are allowed to fester, they become big problems. You may need to enlist the guidance of a business coach or advisor that specializes in communication. Welcoming conflict and difficult conversations in a safe and judgement-free environment is difficult for people, not just businesses, so it’s understandable if it doesn’t come naturally. But, if you commit to doing the work and cultivating a culture around open communication, it pays off in many ways. One being that problems are not allowed to fester, nor are they allowed to pile on top of each other, meaning they can be dealt with long before they become reasons to leave.
7. Pay people what they’re worth
An engaging culture matters a lot. Paying people what they’re worth matters just as much. It’s how you recognize their value and show that you respect them as human beings with lives outside the workplace. Canada is experiencing record low unemployment rates at the moment, which means people often do have other options if they don’t feel valued and respected at work. Adecco’s 2020 Salary Guide can help you attract and retain top talent. Find out more here.
Fun Employee Retention Ideas
The 7 ideas above are strategies for cultivating engagement in order to increase retention rates. Not every tactic will be fun and exciting, but they don’t all have to be difficult conversations and intensive workshops. You can have fun with it, too! Here are a few ideas for putting the fun into increasing retention through engagement:
- Out-of-the-box team-building activities: escape rooms, the egg drop challenge, cooking classes, axe throwing, circus school, paint night… get creative and mix it up!
- New hire parties: throw a little party as part of your on-boarding program. It’s fun for current employees and gets your new hire right into the social sphere of the workplace, helping them feel engaged with the team right off the bat.
- Team mascots: mascots are a fun way of getting people to bond. Have teams come up with their own mascot and give a little presentation about why they chose it and how their mascot embodies the values or mission of the organization or team.
- Silliness: as long as it’s respectful and within corporate guidelines, let people get silly and even join in. Let them post memes on the old copier, put googly eyes on the office plants, (safely) race the office chairs, toss a beach ball around or have a jack-o-lantern smashing event in the parking lot after Halloween. Silliness brings joy and joy brings engagement.
- Social media sharing: let employees take turns taking over your organization’s social media accounts for the day and watch the creativity soar. This helps keep your social media fresh, engages your client base and helps employees feel a sense of ownership within the organization.
- Fun time pay: if you’re taking your employees on an escape room adventure for the day or bringing in a chef to teach everyone how to make macarons, pay them their wages. Even if it’s a fun activity, you’re still taking them away from their personal lives for the benefit of the organization. When you respect that, people enjoy it more.
Companies with the best employee retention programs know that fun activities are the icing on the retention cake. The core of a solid retention plan is putting the hard work into creating a culture around employee engagement, whether those employees are hourly or salaried. So, if increasing retention is one of your organization’s goals for 2020, take your retention lessons from the best and don’t start with the icing. Start with what truly matters: engagement.