Decoding Employee Turnover: Paving the Way to Retention Success

Hiring employees is an art. You want to make sure you’re properly screening someone to ensure they not only have the skills needed for the job, but that their personality will also be a good cultural fit for the office. Perhaps even more difficult than hiring incredible employees is retaining them. What employee retention strategies does your business use? Are they effective? 

Every business owner knows that turnover is inevitable, but it’s important to notice how high your turnover rate is and how successful you are at retaining employees. A high turnover rate costs a business more than money – it also costs time and productivity. From finding a new skilled employee to training them, if you find yourself in this constant cycle, it’s time to learn how to retain employees.

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Why do employees leave?

If you have trouble identifying how to retain employees, it’s important to find out why staff leave. Are they unhappy at work due to poor culture or toxic coworkers? Do they leave for higher-paying positions or those with better benefits? Have poor crisis leadership management skills caused a mass exodus during a recent stressful time in your company? 

To identify the reasons you are struggling with retaining employees, conduct exit interviews with those who leave your company and have regular one-on-one meetings with your current team to gauge their level of fulfillment and identify what more you could provide them. There are several common reasons for leaving that you’re likely to find.

 retaining employees

  • Lack of growth opportunities. As Tony says, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” Growth is an essential human need both in the workplace and in your employees’ lives outside of work. If your company lacks opportunities for promotions and professional development, employees are likely to look elsewhere.
  • Lack of work-life balance. Work-life balance is increasingly important as the world turns to a remote work model. Many employees have spouses and children home with them, and they want more flexible hours and paid time off so they can put their families first.
  • Employees don’t feel valued. Significance and contribution are also essential human needs – employees want to feel like they are needed and are contributing to something larger than themselves. Recognizing their accomplishments and making them feel valued goes a long way toward retaining employees.
How to retain employees

To increase engagement and enhance employee retention, Tony Robbins developed a principle called The Success Cycle. The cycle lays out how to retain employees and keep your best team members working efficiently. Succeeding in your employee retention strategies requires approaching things from an employee’s perspective. Once you understand what inspires your employees, you can align your business strategy to guarantee you are meeting your employees’ needs. 

These are four steps to The Success Cycle and how it applies to employee retention strategies.

Step 1: Belief and attitude

Employee retention is all about making your employees feel valued and appreciated. When you gloss over the success of your team, you risk negatively impacting how your team views the company. Why would people want to work somewhere that they feel doesn’t acknowledge their hard work?

  • Create a culture of appreciation. Create an internal culture that shows gratitude to each and every member of your team. Focus on developing employee strengths rather than calling out weaknesses, and provide a support system that shows you care about employees both in and out of work. You’ll empower your employees to remain at your company and work harder.  
  • Celebrate success. It’s easy to get so caught up in moving your company forward that you forget to celebrate success along the way. Consider calling out employee successes during weekly or monthly meetings and recognize employees who go above and beyond with bonuses, gift cards or extra paid days off.

When you take the time to focus on the positives, your team will have a good attitude – and retaining employees becomes much easier.

Step 2: Potential

The second step to retaining employees is tapping into your team’s potential. The truth is, every single person has unlimited potential, but we often forget this. So, how do you tap into your team’s potential to increase employee retention?

  • Look for hidden talent. It’s sometimes easier to recognize those who are more outspoken or successful right off the bat, but in doing so, you risk overlooking potential leaders whose talents might not be as visible at first glance. This can cause talented employees to seek out other places of employment where their supervisors understand and develop their leadership traits.
  • Encourage team bonding. Host interactive bonding activities that build their confidence and encourage cross-functional collaboration. This is where one-on-one meetings come in as well, as these moments give you a chance to get to know each individual better and hone in on their unique strengths. Policies like these will increase trust in the workplace, improve teamwork and help you retain employees.

When you give your employees a chance to succeed and see themselves in a new way, you build momentum that will propel your team forward and make your employee retention strategies more effective.

Step 3: Action

With this employee retention momentum comes inevitable plateaus, as described in The Training Effect. How do you let your employees know they can break down plateaus and find new success at work? One of the best employee retention strategies is creating a company that allows for unlimited room for growth.

Employee retention strategies to encourage action

  • Invest in professional development. Invest in employees with opportunities for learning and growth. Whether this is individual training or seminars or funding online classes and certifications or challenging them by asking them to tackle new tasks or providing cross-training, show your employees that you are dedicated to helping them reach their next level.  
  • Commit to CANI. Your employees follow your lead. Show your team that you are committed to constant and never-ending improvement by investing in innovation such as AI technology or finding other ways to be a disruptive company. This gives your team peace of mind that their jobs are secure and that they’ll be given the opportunity to learn new cutting-edge information as their careers progress.

Step 4: Results

The final step in The Success Cycle hinges on results. Success feeds on success and generates even more success. The more success your employees experience, the more they’ll create the belief and momentum to succeed on an even higher scale. And when they succeed, the more likely they’ll want to stay and continue improving at your company.

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Employee retention strategies to get results

  • Encourage positive habits. Encouraging the types of habits that make your employees strive toward progress will help them achieve the results they need to keep feeding this positive loop. When you focus on healthy habits that incorporate both constructive feedback when things go wrong and plenty of positive feedback when things go right, you create a thriving culture where retaining employees is merely a side effect.
  • Focus on solutions. When something goes wrong and an employee messes up, how do you react? Do you punish them and crush their spirit? Or do you evaluate the problem and determine an effective solution? As Tony says, “Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.” Mistakes happen. No employee wants to work for a company that treats them unkindly – they want to work for a company they believe in, who also believes in them.

Every good business owner knows that their success depends on their team. To build a gold-standard team, you must have effective employee retention strategies and always have an eye on progress.

YOUR PEAK PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP

Are you ready to get started? The Peak Performance Workshop is a complimentary training designed to massively improve the areas every business struggles with, including dealing with effective employee retention strategies. Expertly trained to ignite that inner fire and create a winning team for your business, working with a Peak Performance Strategist is the catalyst your business needs to grow.