For the success and long-term health of any business, employee retention is one of the key elements. Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain employees by addressing their needs to enhance job satisfaction. Retaining employees ensures the following benefits:
- Product sales
- Satisfied coworkers
- Satisfied customers
- Effective planning
- Reaching organizational goals
An organization will not be able to survive if the experience employees start to resign frequently. To achieve organizational goals, hardworking and dedicated employees are required. Hence it is necessary to focus on them and retain them.
For retaining employees, human resource team plays an important role. The HR department is responsible for making efforts like training of employees, issuing bonus and other incentives, improving employee retention strategies and improving the workplace environment.
Let us discuss the role of HR department in retaining employees.
- HR should intervene in case any employee resigns:
There is always a reason because of which an employee decides to resign. It is the duty of human resource department to investigate the reason. There can be so many reasons like not liking the workplace environment, not satisfied with the pay, lack of career and growth opportunities, conflicts with coworkers or superiors, etc. The HR team should probe into it and solve the issues to retain the employees.
- Provide proper training to the employees:
An employee usually fails at work because of improper training. HR team should make sure that proper training is provided to them to make them excel in their respective area of work. They must always have the necessary means to perform well. In order to retain them, it is very important that they go through a proper training process.
- Provide career and growth opportunities:
For every employee, career advancement and promotions is a tool for their growth and development. They should be provided with new opportunities, more challenging tasks and should be made to attend various seminars and workshops. When an employee experience career and growth opportunities in the organization, he will never be willing to leave.
- Discuss their issues:
Employees inevitably suffer from the problems in their workplaces such as attendance issues or conflicts with the superiors or coworkers. HR department should have a clear and direct communication with the employees to solve their problems. After discovering the problem, it’s important to take some actions rather than letting it fester and get worse.
- Choose right employees:
An employee should be assigned those responsibilities and activities which suits his interest and specialization. Whenever a right person is doing a job which doesn’t suit his area of interest than he would never find his job interesting and will look for the ways to change it.
- Motivate the employees:
Employees should be inspired and motivated so that they can give their best efforts. Motivated employees help in increasing productivity and achieve greater levels of output. Employees who are not motivated at work will use his time for personal pleasure or looking for another job. It is very important to motivate them in order to retain them.
- Never threaten an employee’s income or job:
HR department should never threaten the income or job of the employee even if the layoffs are looming. Never foretell the information with the employees as it will make them anxious and they will tend to look for another job.
- Appreciate them:
Employees should feel appreciated while working in the organization. Both monetary and non-monetary rewards should be given to them. Appraisals will help in retaining the staff as they feel much more motivated when they are appraised for their accomplishments.
- Performance review:
When the employees are given monotonous tasks it does not offer them any learnings and growth opportunities because of which they tend to look for other jobs. To retain the employees, job rotation should be effectively used.
- Make the employees feel that they own their work:
Employees should feel that their job is engaging. They should feel the sense of ownership of their jobs. HR team can personalize their offices with the photos of their family members, should allow the employees to choose their work, engage them in important matters of discussion. All these activities can help in giving them a sense of engagement and ownership.
HR team must attract and retain employees and try their level best to motivate them so that they do not look for a change. Employee turnover acts as a drain on the staff of the company and their financial resources. Losing employees can reduce productivity and increase the cost of finding and training a new employee. The duty of the HR team is to treat the employees with integrity to retain them for a long period of time.
AUTHOR BIO: I’m Jessica Gross. I read and write every day on various topics related to society, culture, academics, business, and lifestyle. Also, I have been working as an academic consultant for Australian assignment help for more than a decade. You can catch me on Twitter Jessica.
