The topic of employee retention addresses many components of HR work.
For THE MAK’ED TEAM, employee retention means the interplay of corporate culture and values as well as measures aimed at ensuring that suitable employees remain with the company in the long term, with commitment and motivation, and that involuntary redundancies are avoided.
The measures begin with onboarding from the signing of the contract and end when the employee leaves, always characterised by the corporate culture and its values.
Strategic employee retention contributes to employer branding, as all measures have an impact on the attractiveness of the employer and therefore also strengthen the employer brand.
Success depends on the employees
The success of your company depends largely on your employees. You want and need to be sufficiently attractive as an employer and offer your employees interesting prospects.
A large number of studies on the situation of employees in Germany have come to a clear conclusion: an alarmingly high proportion of employees in our companies have resigned internally and identify neither with us as an employer nor with the tasks with which we employ them. But how should medium-sized companies like yours react in order to ensure that they have enough qualified employees in the future?
The performance and motivation of your employees depend on the “total package”: remuneration, working atmosphere, personal and task-related development opportunities and recognition are key factors and reduce staff turnover costs.
Employee retention is therefore based on a strategic decision and the realisation that it is more effective and efficient for your company to retain, promote and develop existing employees.
What initially sounds like higher costs usually results in a gain for your company and your employees and can usually be realised with reasonable effort or even almost cost-neutrally.
Measures with a positive impact on employee retention
- Opportunity for personal and professional development as part of personnel development
- Career & development paths
- Valuable and individualised onboarding process
- Individual remuneration management
- Examples: BAV, salary optimisation in the form of financial benefits
- Attractive pension scheme
- Example: lump-sum provident fund
- Contract design
- Examples: Working models, workplace organisation, sabbaticals, work-away-from-home
- Subsidies
- Examples: Subsidies for public transport, company bike, company car, petrol card
- Company kindergarten
- Canteen/cafeteria
- Examples: Provision of drinks, lunch, fruit
- Involvement in decisions
- Examples: “Every vote counts”, CIP
- Modern personnel management
- Examples: Regular feedback meetings, HR IT system
- Appreciative & practised corporate culture
- Examples: Open communication, team culture, work-life balance, team events
- Development of managers for motivating and goal-orientated cooperation within the company
Key questions for further possibilities
Individual appreciation:
- How can we promote individual appreciation for each employee in order to build an emotional bond?
- What concrete measures can be taken to honour the individual contributions of each employee?
Transparency and career development:
- To what extent can transparent career and salary models strengthen employee loyalty and how much transparency is required?
- How do we clearly communicate career development opportunities and how can employees achieve their individual career goals?
Retention influences in everyday working life:
- At what points in everyday working life can we have a particularly strong influence on retention?
Influencing employee perspectives:
- Why do employees view our company positively or negatively? And how can we actively influence this perception?
- What measures can be taken to promote employees’ understanding of the company’s goals and strengthen their identification with the company?
Skills development in the company:
- Which competences are currently and in the future crucial for the success of the company and how does this influence the development of our employees?
- How can we ensure that our employees can acquire and develop the skills they need to fulfil the company’s objectives?
Customised employee retention for your company
However, it is particularly important to emphasise that each company and its employees must be considered individually; there is no “one size fits all” concept for employee retention. In particular, a company’s skills management is an important basis for measures and decisions.
It is therefore important to ask yourself the following questions: Where does the company stand? Where does it want to go? How does this affect the employees? Which people does it need? What suits the company?
The strategic orientation of the company is important here, taking into account the employees based on their function within the company. For example, it is difficult for manufacturing companies to offer their industrial employees the option of working from home.
Further Information
Link zu: A Priority for SMEs: Strengthening Employee Loyalty
A Priority for SMEs: Strengthening Employee Loyalty
Stable employee retention is a top issue at management level today and a decisive factor for corporate success. For many companies, the issue is exerting enormous pressure in view of the increasing shortage of skilled labour and rising staff turnover. If employees resign or have already quietly resigned and are only doing the bare minimum […]
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Link zu: Competence Management: The Right Tools For Optimal Employee Development
Competence Management: The Right Tools For Optimal Employee Development
Competence management is important in a company to ensure that employee resources are used optimally. Through competence management, the skills and competences of employees can be developed and used in a focused way. Competence management is a demanding task. How does the company know what competencies a person has outside their field of work? And […]
