In the era of the Great Resignation, employee turnover coupled with high recruitment costs, effort and time has posed a significant challenge for businesses across the globe. With the onset of the pandemic and people holding on to their jobs till 2020, most employers did not see this hit coming. According to the numbers shared by the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the median tenure among people in the 55 to 64 years bucket is 10.1 years, whereas, for 25 to 34 years it is only one-third of it, i.e., 2.8 years. With millennials and Gen-zs contributing to a significant chunk of the workforce, this is an alarming problem for organisations to delve deeper into their people strategy. Replacing people can cost anywhere between 16% to 213% of an individual’s salary, as per research by Quantum Workplace. It’s not just the cost, but also the time and effort took to hire the best fit. Further, the time taken to fill positions also adversely impacts the business.

This makes it crucial for organisations to focus on their retention strategy by keeping their talent happy and engaged. Retaining talent offers definite advantages to businesses; better customer experience leads to increased revenue. Moreover, it stimulates the organisational culture, creating a ripple effect on employees’ experience, morale, and satisfaction. 

By not understanding what people are running from, and what they gravitate to, leaders are putting their businesses at risk and perhaps even making misdirected efforts on retaining them.

Why do people leave?

• Better monetary benefits
• Challenging roles
• Lack of learning and growth track
• Absence of friendly culture & benefits
• Dearth of recognition
• Burnout
• Misalignment with the manager

What is the approach to developing a robust retention strategy?

Understand the demographics & create customised engagement

By reflecting on the demographics of your workforce; age, tenure, ethnicity, roles, mode of working, tenure, experience, etc. one may create buckets to understand what would work for specific categories of talent, using data and research. For example; people working in entry-level roles may look at their learning and growth more in comparison to other propositions in the organization, whereas senior talent may need lucrative benefits to stay. By understanding these nuances, you may create a more customised experience for your people instead of a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Open two-way communication

Ensure you listen to your people through multiple channels and touchpoints. Create a culture of effective listening to what your people have to say. Make sure you have enough touchpoints to make your people feel heard. HRBPs partner with people leaders to create a safe space where people can open up freely and thus leaders can offer superior experiences. Frequent surveys may also help the organization understand what people are looking at. Asking relevant questions in surveys is even more important to get your strategy right.

Act on feedback & communicate

Once people have shared their views, ensure that you work on them and close the loop. Communicate your proposition effectively, and create repeated campaigns to ensure your people know exactly what you have to offer to them and why.

Measure the success & refine

A tracking mechanism to comprehend the impact of your initiatives and interventions may help you to understand what’s working and what’s not. It may further help in reflecting on what truly matters to your people to stay engaged with the organisation. Correlate your engagement survey scores with attrition, understand how that training is impacting the engagement scores, and study how long people who get promoted stay with the organisation. Asking these questions shall help in validating the practices and their effectiveness. Following an always-on approach and repeating the loop of listening, action planning, and measuring success can help you stay relevant always.

Some interventions to retain talent:

• Offering genuine care to your people in the form of contemporary medical benefits for self and family and making them feel valued, more than just an employee, to develop a long-lasting employer-employee relationship
• Provide your people multiple avenues to learn and develop from; bite-sized learnings, MOOCs, trainer-led workshops, etc.
• Ensure that you practice compensation benchmarking at least annually to make sure your pay scale is competitive!
• Offer vertical and horizontal career movements to high-potential individuals
• Make a robust process for appreciation & recognition.
• Offer lifestyle-enhancing benefits; flexibility, mentoring, gym memberships, etc.
• Leverage technology for predicting attrition and elements that lead to attrition for formulating high-impact practices

 In a nutshell, form deeper connections, offer radical flexibility, share a common purpose, offer meaningful roles, provide autonomy, develop your people leaders, ensure personal growth and provide holistic benefits to truly do what it takes to make retention the new recruitment and add value to your business!