By Isaac Chan

Recruiting and retaining valuable employees doesn’t always involve a simple approach and instead can at times require a special formula of a number of factors to make sure that an employee wants to stay with you.

Correct & Competitive Pay

First and foremost a great way to retain your staff is to ensure that you are paying your employees correctly and competitively. Pay can be a big deciding factor for individuals joining your business but also staying with your business as well.  This means that if you are remunerating an employee much higher than the industry standard an employee will more likely want to stay with you.

The same can also be said about bonuses. Providing your employees with bonuses or other financial incentives to reward them for their hard work, can be a great way to encourage the employee to stay with you.

Flexible Conditions

Providing flexible working conditions can also be a great way to retain staff as it allows employees to steer away from the typical 9-5 office grind. This could involve things such as starting earlier and finishing earlier so they can pick up their kids from school or even giving employees the ability to work from home a couple of days a week.

This can go a long way to make an employee able to shape their work around their lifestyle and not the other way around. Having work conditions that blend well with their lifestyle is a great motivator for the employee to stay.

Culture

Workplace culture is often described as the values, beliefs, rituals and attitudes of a business. While that may sound like a long-winded definition, workplace culture is an extremely important driver for staff retention and it can often be the little things that really create a great a workplace culture. This could involve added benefits like catered lunches, funded work events or a more consultative open and collaborative workspace where there is less division between staff.

Management

Another great way to retain staff is by ensuring that you have great management within your team. This can be a difficult one to attain because it can be dependent on the managers you have within your business. However, having an approachable, considerate and motivated manager acting as a leader for your business can go a long way.

This not only ensures that your staff are in good hands but will also enable staff to feel as though they can approach and work with their manager on issues rather than view any interaction as a motivator to leave the business.

Development

Providing further workplace training and development can also be a great way to encourage employees to stay with the business. Providing training and development to your employees shows your commitment to furthering their career and exposes the employee to new skills and experiences.

Keeping great staff can often be a challenging notion, especially if they have been with you for some time, but by putting some solid frameworks in place this can go a long way in making sure that sure that your employees are with you for the long run!

Isaac Chan is an experienced workplace relations consultant at FCB Group and HR Assured Australia. Isaac regularly handles complex workplace issues for all kinds of businesses, from start-ups to enterprise-level.