Hiring and onboarding talent can be time-consuming, but retaining these talents can be more difficult, especially for startups, as employees leave to work for other companies. This can be a problem for startups because talent retention and reducing employee turnover are critical to a startup’s ability to avoid a negative brand image.
In this article, we will discuss various tips and strategies that you can use as a startup to retain talent and reduce employee turnover.
What Is Employee Retention?
Employee retention is the process of keeping employees loyal and engaged with your organization for the long term. It is the process of preventing employees from leaving the organization by offering them an attractive work environment. Retaining employees also helps in improving the productivity and efficiency of the organization.
A startup with a high rate of employee retention will experience a number of positive benefits, including higher profits, reduced hiring costs, and greater staff morale. The hiring process of a startup can get challenging. Therefore, the talents hired must be retained and managed properly.
What Is Employee Turnover
Employee turnover is defined as the total number of employees who have left or left a company during a given time period. According to the Work Institute 2019 Retention Final Report, over 41.4 million employees left their jobs to work for another company, resulting in employee turnover in a variety of companies.
Employee turnover includes people who left the company voluntarily or involuntarily, such as those who moved to a new location, became ill, died, were fired, or retired. Voluntary turnover is when an employee leaves a company of his own free will and for various reasons such as a desire to switch to another career or change in career goals. While Involuntary employee turnover occurs when an employee is laid off or fired for performance issues.
High employee turnover, mainly voluntary turnover, affects a company’s image and its ability to hire talent and achieve its objectives and goals. This is especially true for a startup that is experiencing rapid growth.
Reasons For Employee Turnover
Employee turnover is a challenge that most startups face, and it is influenced by a variety of factors, some of which are listed below.
- Lack of work flexibility
- Unplanned life events such as sickness, death of loved ones, or the employee
- Poor relationship with people in leadership positions
- Lack of proper worker’s compensation and employee benefits
- Lack of growth and career advancement
- Laying off employees due to poor performances
- Excessive workload
- Little to no recognition for excellent work performance
- Toxic workspace and colleagues
- Poor work and company culture
- Poor management
- Change in career goals and interests
How To Retain Talent In Your Startup And Reduce Employee Turnover
Talent retention refers to the steps that startups take and implement to retain talented employees within the company. Retaining employees is important for the success of an organization, and below are tips on retaining talent in your startup.
Ensure There is Effective Communication
Talented employees are quick to leave workspaces where they lack job satisfaction and a toxic workspace; therefore, ensure you create a work environment that allows for communication.
Your employees are part of the team, which means their input is critical to the company’s growth. A culture of open communication allows you to understand where you can improve and what the leadership is doing well for the employees.
Create Work And Practice Flexibility
Work-life balance is essential if you want to attract and retain talented employees; therefore, create flexible work schedules, leave such as maternity or paternity leave, and allow for remote or hybrid work options.
Reduce stringency in rules and regulations, problem-solving, and workplace practices. Allowing your employees to think for themselves and develop new problem-solving procedures or techniques is what this means.
Create Incentives And Employee Benefits
As a startup, create incentives and employee benefits to reward these talents for their work. Creating incentives and benefits is essential, especially for startups, because talented employees may leave for larger companies with better incentives.
Creating incentives and benefits shows them how much you value their work and keeps them happy and productive. From choosing the right health insurance to providing your team with the best possible pensions and savings plans, you can offer lots of benefits to retain employees.
Create An Excellent And Strategic Onboarding Process
Retention is best accomplished at the start of an employee’s career with your company, which can only be accomplished by developing an excellent onboarding process. A successful onboarding process integrates new employees into the company’s culture, employee roles, and workspace.
It also helps you retain new hires by helping them feel welcome and appreciated from the moment they join your startup. Most employees never forget their first day or first few weeks at a new company, and this memory or experience shapes their view of the company. Therefore you must create an onboarding process that seamlessly integrates employees and is focused on support and encouragement.
Create An Environment Of Growth, Learning, And Development
Constant learning and development increase the knowledge of employees and their competency. It also benefits the company and encourages retention. Creating an environment of growth, learning, and development will make your team more engaged, but it will also make your business stronger.
When you have a team of people who are curious and eager to learn, they will be more productive and engaged with their work. You can promote employee growth, learning, and development by enrolling them in coding bootcamps like Thinkful, Coding Dojo, Springboard, and App Academy, to gain in-demand skills that can help them improve at their jobs.
Should I Employ Talent Retention Strategies As A Startup?
Yes, you should employ talent retention strategies such as those listed above because your employees play a significant role in enhancing the image of your company. Also, talented employees are essential to the expansion of a business. Therefore, it is necessary to employ and implement talent retention strategies to reduce employee turnover.