This year it is estimated that 47 million people will quit their jobs, according to a study published by the Work Institute. That turnover costs your company in extra money for recruiting efforts, overtime pay to cover the existing workload and potentially employee morale (no one wants to work for a sinking ship). Creating an employee retention plan can significantly lower turnover keeping your company’s best assets on board.

Get Tracking (Your Turnover That Is)

The first step to creating a winning employee retention plan is to figure out why and at what rate your employees are leaving. A company-wide retention rate is actually pretty easy to calculate. Use this formula:

# of individual employees who remained employed for entire measurement period / # of employees at start of measurement period) x 100

You can calculate your retention rate on an annual basis or using smaller measurements. For example, if you are looking to immediately evaluate the results of recent retention imitative, try calculating your company’s retention rate over the previous six months. Or, you can evaluate how your retention rate was impacted over a period of years, especially when comparing it against bigger events like a recession or a company merger.

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Pay Attention to What Keeps Your Employees Happy

When it comes to retention, you might be thinking, “Can’t I just pay my employees more to get them to stay?” Yes and no. Today’s employees not only want more from a company, they expect it. They want to work somewhere that cares about their wants, needs and future growth.

  • Help them Grow. According to Gallup, one of the determining factors for the past decade’s rise in employee engagement is best attributed to how organizations develop employees. Development includes CEO-initiated efforts, coaching employees, communicating best practices and holding managers accountable. Performance management can identify the areas where your employees want to grow and help you both create goals to get them there.
  • Provide an Awesome Culture. Forty-one percent of employees leave a job due to its culture. Company culture is the environment in which your employees work, and the company operates. It can include many different things but should always tie back to your mission, goals, values and policies; like a mentorship program for employees on a management track, parental leave for both mom an dad and student loan repayment.
  • Personally and Sincerely Recognize them. Whether it is throwing an all-company party, giving employees a half-day off or simply writing a thank you card, employee recognition shows your employees that you care about them and recognize their hard work.
  • Compensate Them Accordingly. So while compensation isn’t the only driving factor to employee retention, it’s still a factor. If your employee is putting in the work to meet or exceed company expectations on a regular basis, eventually a thank you note isn’t going to cut it. Compensation Management allows you to manage salary increases, bonuses and compare market data.

Get Buy-In from the Entire Company

An employee retention plan is only good if everyone is on board with its success. Since everyone in the company has the power to raise or lower turnover rates, they all need to play a part in creating a culture that keeps employees around. Managers handle day-to-day operations, coworkers foster collaboration and talent acquisition systems, like an ATS, ensure the right candidates are hired to begin with.

Employee turnover is a major concern for most companies, and HR tools, like those from BirdDogHR, an Arcoro Company, can help. We offer an entire suite of products, like an ATS, onboarding, benefits management, compensation management, performance development, learning development and succession planning to not only hire the best employees but keep them around for the long term.