According to a recent Microsoft report, 62% of Indians intend to switch jobs, compared to an average of 41% globally. Effective employee retention strategies have always been important but even more so now.
Businesses are increasingly witnessing situations where a top performer resigns suddenly, causing a massive loss for the organisation. As a result, the company has its remaining employees shoulder the additional workload. That adds to their frustration, affects employee morale, undermines their performance, and makes them think of leaving the company.
To avoid such situations, it is important to understand the needs of your employees and have employee retention strategies in place.
In this blog post, we’ll list 9 practical ways to retain employees in your company. But first, let’s understand how crucial employee retention is.
Table of Contents
Why is employee retention important?
While you might think hiring new employees gives you an edge by allowing you to onboard fresh talent, it also adds to the company’s overall cost. The entire process of advertising, interviewing, onboarding, and training takes up a lot of money and time. Here are some reasons why you must consider retaining employees in your startup:
- Turnover costs – Employee turnover comes with a lot of costs in terms of the hiring process and the loss of productivity. Some studies suggest that employers need to spend the equivalent of 6-9 months of an employee’s salary to find and train their replacement.
- Lost Knowledge – No matter how skilled a new employee is, a seasoned or experienced employee knows about the processes, product, and workspace more than the new hire. There’s always some time taken by the new hire to get onboard with the new processes.
- Low Productivity – A vacant position leads to lower levels of productivity overall. Furthermore, any attempt made by the existing employees to shoulder additional responsibilities further deteriorates their productivity levels.
Why are employees quitting?
While there cannot be a single reason, a few common issues that cause a high attrition rate among employees are:
- Inadequate salary and growth opportunities
- Lack of work-life balance
- Lack of recognition and appreciation
- Limited opportunities for career growth
- Bad company culture
- Feeling overworked
- Desire for a change
- Dissatisfaction with the management
- Boredom and stagnation
Here are 9 employee retention strategies to help your organisation retain the most hard-working and talented employees forever.
9 Effective employee retention strategies
Remember, your employees are adequately skilled, and there are a lot of companies ready to offer them better opportunities. Therefore, you need to move fast and improve your employee retention strategies.
1. Employee Onboarding
They say that the first impression is the last.
Whenever you hire a new employee, the first step is onboarding them. The onboarding process should focus on teaching them about their job responsibilities, the company culture and how they can thrive in it.
To make the employee onboarding process easy and quick, you can consider investing in an intuitive HR software like RazorpayX Payroll. A comprehensive software will help you manage the entire employee lifecycle from onboarding to exit process.
It assists you in generating offer letters, calculating CTC, accessing payslips, leave & attendance management at one place with just a few clicks. Your employees can upload all documents such as PAN, Adhar card, etc., saving them from the hassles of printouts and paperwork. Hence, creating an overall smooth employee onboarding experience.
2. Employee Compensation
Compensation is one of the most integral factors that influences the decision of any employee to stay or leave a company. You must always revisit your employee’s compensation and revise them periodically in a structured appraisal process to keep them happy. Even if you are a startup and cannot afford to increase salaries, you can consider offering bonuses and performance-based incentives.
3. ESOPs
Another great employee retention strategy is to offer ESOPs or Employee Stock Ownership Plans to them. ESOP is an employee benefit that allows the employees to have ownership of the stocks of the company. It helps create a sense of ownership in their minds and makes them work towards the betterment of the organisation.
Read more in our blog post “The Complete Guide to ESOPs.”
4. Other perks
Other than monetary compensation, you can add perks to your list of employee retention strategies. These perks give you an edge over your competitors and make your organisation stand out for the new hires. The perks can include wellness leaves, better maternity and paternity leaves, paid leave days, etc.
Companies like Razorpay are renaming sick leaves to ‘wellness leaves’ to encourage employee mental health well-being. CEO & CoFounder, Harshil Mathur said,
5. Employee Wellness Offerings
The pandemic has made everyone more conscious about their mental, physical and financial well-being. Therefore, it is a great idea to extend wellness offerings for the good health of your employees.
Employee health insurance plans are a great way to support your employees. But when you are a startup, it can be difficult to get good insurance plans for your employees.
You can get best-in-class yet affordable group health insurance with RazorpayX Payroll. It also provides employee insurance plans for teams as small as 2! So, even if you are a startup, you can still get excellent health insurance plans for your employees.
6. Frequent Check-ins
Open communication among the employees and the management is integral to the well-being of employees. A transparent communication structure allows the employees to easily share their ideas, opinions, views, and questions. Moreover, it can also help you get a sense of their goals, job satisfaction, and provide them with constructive feedback.
7. Flexible work arrangements
According to reports, most employees are seeking flexibility in their work lives. Providing them with an option to choose between work from home or work from the office will help increase work flexibility. You can also consider introducing a hybrid work model where the employees work from home and the office.
8. Recognition and rewards
Feeling appreciated and recognised for their hard work can significantly impact an employee’s morale. Therefore, you must set up rewards and recognition systems for the hard-working employees and the top achievers in your company.
9. Work-life balance
An adequate work-life balance is a major factor influencing an employees’ job satisfaction. Therefore, your employee retention strategy must include providing the employees with a generous amount of wellness leaves.
Implement employee retention strategies quickly with RazorpayX Payroll
Sometimes, making employee-centric strategies becomes difficult due to the lack of time. The HR team is swamped with tasks that can be easily automated. RazorpayX Payroll helps automate tedious manual tasks like:
- Employee onboarding
- Employee attendance & leave management
- CTC calculation
- Payroll calculation and salary disbursement
- Compliance filings such as PF, PT, TDS & ESIC
- HR Letter generation such as offer letter, appraisal letter, etc.
So that you and your team can focus on more important and strategic tasks. Sign up on RazorpayX Payroll today for free and experience India’s only fully automated HR & payroll software. We don’t even require your credit card details.
