Employee Retention and Your Business

Business owners and managers know that keeping the best employees isn’t easy. In an article for Entrepreneur, Matthew Wride, COO of DecisionWise, provides a series of questions for leaders to use in order to evaluate their employee policies and management practices so that talented employees stay, rather than look for work elsewhere.

In addition to noting that flexibility for employees is an important retention practice, Wride challenges managers to recognize that in business today, employees hold the cards, not employers. While businesses can certainly set parameters, the most talented employees have more options, including starting their own firms or working for competitors.

Wride suggests that business owners a managers use the following five questions to self-evaluate and come up with strategies for retaining their valued employees:

1. Is your employee experience engineered to promote hourly output or actual value? In other words, do you value your employees by the number of hours they work, or by the quality of their work product? Wride recommends the latter.
2. Are you looking to create a good cultural fit for your employees? In order to retain good employees, it is important to develop an employee experience that supports their needs and interests, while also maintaining your business objectives.
3. Are you creating a culture that aligns with the needs of the whole employee? People all work differently. Some employees are most-productive within usual office hours, while others work better outside office hours, whenever, or wherever, inspiration happens to strike.
4. Does your culture support and promote learning and curiosity? This question piggy-backs off of the previous one. Business owners and managers should work to understand, value, and accommodate for the varying needs of different team members.
5. When was the last time you really examined your business practices as they relate to your employees? Just because a method worked well in the past doesn’t mean that it will work forever. As time progresses, and as your business grows and changes, it is important not to maintain traditional tactics simply for tradition’s sake; rather, you should be in the habit of constantly re-examining businesses practices to evaluate whether they are still affective.

As you know, having a great team supporting your business is important. Wride notes that understanding your team members’ needs can lead to longer-term employees at your firm. In addition, creating a culture that focuses on your employees and their talents can go a long way towards building your business’s success.

For additional details on evaluating your employee policies, read the full article at Entrepreneur.