The Art of Hiring

Hiring employees is only the beginning creating a strong work force. Next, you have to keep them. High employee turnover costs business owners both time and productivity.

Try these tactics to retain your employees and keep them happy

– Offer a competitive benefits package that suits your employees’ needs. Providing health insurance, life insurance and a retirement-savings plan is crucial in retaining employees. Other perks, such as the option of telecommuting, goes a long way to show employees you are happy to accommodate their outside lives.

– Provide small perks. Free bagels on Fridays and free dry cleaning pickup may seem insignificant to you, but if they help employees manage their lives better, they’ll appreciate it and may be more likely to stick around.

– Use incentives to help keep workers motivated and feeling rewarded. When done right, these kinds of incentives can keep your employees focused and excited about their jobs.

– Conduct “stay” interviews. In addition to performing exit interviews to learn why employees are leaving, consider asking longer-tenured employees why they stay. Ask questions such as: Why did you come to work here? Why have you stayed? And what are your nonnegotiable issues? What about your managers? What would you change or improve? Then use that information to strengthen your employee-retention strategies.

– Promote from within when possible. And give employees a clear path of advancement. Employees will become frustrated and may stop trying if they don’t have no clear future for themselves at your company.

– Foster employee development. This could be on-site training to learn a new job skill or tuition reimbursement to help further your employee’s education.

Create open communication between employees and management. Hold regular meetings in which employees can offer ideas and ask questions. Have an open-door policy that encourages employees to speak frankly with their managers without fear of repercussion.

– Get managers involved. Require your managers to spend time coachingemployees, helping good performers move to new positions and minimizing poor performance.

– Communicate your business’s mission. Feeling connected to the organization’s goals is one way to keep employees mentally and emotionally tied to your company.

– Offer financial rewards. Consider offering stock options for employees who meet performance goals. Also, provide meaningful annual raises. If you can afford it, give more to your top performers. Or, if you don’t want to be stuck with large permanent increases, create a bonus structure where employees can earn an annual bonus if they meet specific performance goals.

– Make sure employees know what you expect of them. It may seem basic, but often in small companies, employees have a wide breadth of responsibilities. If they don’t know exactly what you need from them, they can’t perform up to standard.

– Hire a human-resources professional. If your company is nearing 100 employees, consider hiring a human-resources director to oversee and streamline your employee structure and processes. Putting one person in charge of managing benefits, perks, reviews and related tasks takes a huge load off of you and makes sure employees are treated fairly.

Keeping employees happy is the key to success. Listen to your employees and you will reap the rewards of hardworking staff with stellar performance.