Attracting and retaining the right employees is one of the most challenging post-pandemic elements of international HR. Industries around the world are struggling with skills shortages which makes keeping existing talent more important than ever.
Why is reducing employee turnover important?
- Reducing employee turnover has always been important because:
-Other employees may consider their position
-More expensive to recruit new employees than keep existing ones
-Employees who stay face more pressure
- In today’s workplace employers in many industries must add skills shortages to that list. Global recruiters are struggling to find candidates with the right mix of skills and experience to fill roles. So, employee retention, particularly in niche industries is essential.
1. Find the right talent
Although it may seem counter intuitive, reducing employee turnover begins with a robust recruitment process. It is key as an international HR recruiter, that you are honest about the role and culture of the business from the outset. Less than half of employees asked by Jobvite agreed the job description reflected the actual role. More worryingly this research found one third of newly recruited employees left within three months.
It is also essential that the candidate has the experience and skills necessary to excel at the role or that there is an upskilling plan in place to fill any gaps.
2. Develop strong onboarding processes
Onboarding is every new employees introduction to working within your business and its organisational culture. Much like first impressions, it’s difficult to recover from a bad onboarding experience.
A positive onboarding experience can pave the way for employees to stay with the company for several years as it introduces new employees to your business and shows why their role really matters. The best on-boarding processes provide new starters with a mentor who facilitates connections with people in different departments while checking in with them along the way.
3. Conduct employee insight surveys
Conducting employee insight surveys help global HR teams deliver meaningful actions. They reduce budget or resource waste on benefits that are not relevant to the challenges employees are facing. Encourage employees to take part by ensuring surveys are anonymous and guaranteeing there will be no repercussions for negative feedback.
4. Conduct exit interviews
If an employee does decide to leave, exit interviews can be a good way to understand the motivation behind their move. Sometimes it may be beyond your businesses control but there are times when something internal motivated them to start looking at their options. You will not know which is the case without exit interviews. Pay attention to repeated pain points and use the valuable data to influence HR retention strategy.
5. Recognise and reward employees
While there are a host of reasons, we all work, recognition, and reward play an important role for most people. In most instances, offering competitive rewards and recognising work done is an essential element of retaining the best employees.
6. Offer career development
Another key element to reduce employee turnover is to provide everyone in the business with a roadmap for progressing within the business if they are ambitious and successful at their current role. This is important as it allows employees to understand that there is a career benefit to staying in the business.
Use HR Data to Correlate Attrition Risk
If your business uses just some of the suggestions above, you are likely to create a significant amount of employee data. It is possible to use this information to see how likely an employee is to leave. Begin by looking at historical data to see how long new hires typically stay in the business and attaching a probability score to it. For example, you may find that 10% of new hires leave after two years with the business.
You can use this data to explore the potential reasons why employees may be leaving, does it vary by role, salary, or business function? This kind of analysis, though time consuming, is well worth it to identify some of the reasons employees might be leaving the business. More importantly it is likely to help you develop strategies at those particular points that may encourage employees to stay.
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