4 Retention strategies for today’s workforce

by James Muskett

‘Good’ employee retention like most business strategies, is a constantly shifting goal post.  As the generational spread of the workforce continues to broaden with 5 generations currently working, diverse values means we need to take a broad approach to retain our good staff.

According to research by McCrindle, the average tenure in a job is now just 3.3 years; though this does vary according to age and roughly aligned with the 5 generations.

So what can you do to maximise tenure and minimise the negative impacts of attrition?  Here are 4 simple, low cost strategies you can try…if you are not doing them already!

1. Offer flexibility

Research continues to confirm that flexibility in employment arrangements is consistently in the top three most valued elements for employees and job seekers - across multiple generations.  Just be mindful that flexible arrangements is a bit of a ‘catch-all’ term and means different things to different employees and generations.

Whether it be a policy around making it easy to attend to family emergencies or school activities, or opportunities to allow working from home or simply negotiating individual work hours, by being open to different employee’s flexibility needs and even facilitating discussions around this, it reinforces your vested interest in your team’s wellbeing, leading to increased loyalty to your company.

2. Peer recruitment participation

Most interviews are conducted one-on-one with the hiring manager or with a panel of managers and decision makers.  Consider instead adopting a peer interview process which engages the interest and expertise of the candidate’s future team.

Why do peer interviews work?

• Multiple perspectives can create a more comprehensive picture.  Add to that, being interviewed by people who know the job better than anyone means that they will have high standards, which in turn helps ensure new hires will fit in with co-workers and stick around longer.
• It also helps for both parties (employer and potential employee) to comprehensively and more accurately assess cultural fit; one of the most influential factors in long term retention.
• By asking peers to engage in the hiring process, it results in greater investment in the new hire’s success. This supports effective onboarding which greatly contributes to retention.

Added bonus is that peer interviews are not only likely to improve retention for new hires, trusting the peer recruitment team with such an important function in the hiring process fosters respect and trust and is likely to also improve retention within this group of trusted, valued employees.

As long as you have provided the team with the right training that equips them to ask open-ended, probing questions and ability to assess the candidate’s responses for the purpose of making a selection, this ‘peer’ approach will be successful.

3. Create realistic job simulations

Simulations of on-the-job tasks and scenarios are some of the most effective selection tools from a predictive perspective of on-the-job performance.

If teamwork is a critical factor to success then creating a group task and asking potential candidates to achieve a result together might be one way to create a simulated scenario and observe how different team members react, interact and address and resolve problems.

If the role involves writing or synthesising information, setting a task that involves summarising some research or producing a piece of writing for particular audience or medium can give practical insight into understanding and communication to a level that a portfolio with results but no context around the background and how the outcome was achieved may be able to provide.

Simulations also provide candidates with the opportunity to try out the job in question and allow applicants who do not feel the work is for them to remove themselves from consideration saving time and money.

4. Implement ‘stay’ interviews

Exit interviews are relatively commonplace, but in reality, might be less valuable than gathering insights from your current team.  The ‘stay’ interview is an interview with a current employee to find out why they stay with your organisation rather than searching for a new position.  It’s the exact opposite of the exit interview which is only conducted once the employee resigns from your organisation and it’s too late to prevent the turnover.

Stay interviews can give you insight into the most valued processes, culture, and leadership traits of your company and the opportunity to highlight, strengthen and reinforce these strategically.  Challenges or other factors causing employee dissatisfaction can be addressed directly where possible, or targeted for further analysis and improvement.

The stay interview has proven to be easy to learn and highly effective, almost any manager can dramatically reduce their turnover rate and save hundreds of thousands of dollars by implementing this simple and inexpensive tool.