Great organizations focus on employee retention

Welcoming new team members to your company can be exciting. But if you’re doing it too often, you might have an employee retention problem.

Why is employee retention important? It is far more cost-effective – and better for your business – to retain and develop employees rather than constantly seek new ones. And putting employees first is one of the qualities of a Top Workplace. 

By retaining employees, organizations can reduce the time, cost and resources they need to invest in finding, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and training new staff. Instead, they can focus on developing employees and growing their business.

High turnover takes a toll on productivity, too. It puts pressure on your team to cover missing employees and integrate new ones. Employee churn also affects morale, operating costs and quality.

Top Workplaces understand the importance of employee retention, and they excel at minimizing unwanted turnover. Employee retention aims to keep talented, engaged employees who have extensive organizational knowledge employed with your company.

How do great organizations reduce turnover rates? It starts by fostering a positive work atmosphere. It also factors in competitive benefits and pay, as well as offering a healthy work-life balance for employees.

But employee retention is about more than perks and compensation. Employees want to feel heard, valued, and appreciated, and they want to know their contributions matter.

Employers compete to attract and retain the best and brightest employees, who are looking not only for a competitive salary and benefits package, but also growth and advancement opportunities along with job satisfaction.

If employees don’t find these at your organization, they are going to look elsewhere.

Employee engagement ─ when employees want to invest themselves in their work ─ leads to a more supportive and positive work environment and a better workplace culture. Long-term employees make organizations shine when they develop customer relationships, maximize organizational knowledge, and add skill and experience over time.

Laura Brinton is content marketing director at Energage, a Philadelphia-based employee survey firm. Energage is The Washington Post’s survey partner for Top Workplaces.