Some Strategies to Foster Employee Engagement and Retention

As an employer, you want your employees to be fully engaged and committed to their work. Engaged employees are more productive, motivated, and have a greater sense of purpose in their work. Retaining top talent is also critical to the success of your business. Here are five strategies to foster employee engagement and retention:

Provide Opportunities for Growth and Development

Employees want to feel that they are growing and developing in their careers. Providing opportunities for growth and development can include training, mentorship programs, and leadership development programs. Offering these opportunities can help employees develop new skills and feel valued in their roles.

Foster a Positive Company Culture

A positive company culture is essential to employee engagement and retention. This can include promoting teamwork, open communication, and transparency. By fostering a positive culture, employees feel supported and motivated to contribute to the success of the organization.

Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits

Compensation and benefits are key factors in employee engagement and retention. Ensure that your employees are compensated fairly and that their benefits package is competitive. Offering perks like wellness programs, flexible work schedules, and paid time off can also help employees feel valued and engaged.

Prioritize Work-Life Balance

Employees value work-life balance, and it's important to prioritize this as an employer. Encourage employees to take breaks and avoid overworking. Offering flexible schedules or remote work options can also help employees balance work and personal responsibilities.

Recognize and Reward Employee Contributions

Employees want to feel that their contributions are valued and recognized. Recognize and reward employee achievements and contributions through awards programs, bonuses, or public recognition. This can help boost morale and motivate employees to continue to perform at a high level.

Are you experiencing high levels of employee turnover? Low employee engagement is a major factor for low employee retention. Learn how employee engagement and retention are deeply connected to reduce turnover.

Employees are your business’ most valuable resource. But to keep your employees from seeking other opportunities you have to maintain their fulfilment with their work and your business.

Employee engagement is a crucial aspect of your employee retention picture. Engaged employees care about their work and find meaning in it. They enjoy their workplace and get along with co-workers.

We’ll explore the relationship between employee engagement and retention, and provide practical steps for increasing and measuring employee engagement at your company.

What is Employee Engagement and Retention?

Employee engagement measures how connected your employees are with each other and your business. Their work matters to them and so does their co-workers’ success.

Employee retention is your ability have a lower turnover rate, meaning there are fewer employees leaving for other opportunities. This reduces the need to hire new employees to replace those leaving.

The impact of employee engagement on employee retention is massive. Engaged employees are more likely to remain at your company, and contribute to a stronger company culture.

Employees often leave their jobs because they feel a lack of connection with their role or their coworkers. Weak company culture can make new employees feel excluded from important goings-on at your business, making it more difficult to engage with their work.

Why is employee retention important?

Other than contributing to a solid company culture, employee retention has myriad benefits for your employees and business.

Save time and money: High levels of employee turnover mean a constant investment into acquiring replacements for leaving employees. Higher employee retention reduces the need for constant employee onboarding and offboarding.

Retain experienced employees: Fewer employees leaving means more employees gaining experience. Experienced employees can contribute more to your business and are valuable for educating new employees.

Stronger employee relationships: Employees who work together for longer periods of time have the chance to build solid work relationships with one another. Employees who care about each others’ success have higher levels of employee engagement and contribute to a positive company culture.

Improved employee experience for new hires: New employees can find it difficult to settle into their new role if people around them are always leaving for other jobs. Seeing other employees staying at your company lets new employees know there are opportunities for development within your organization.

Employee retention can be an excellent barometer for how employees succeed at your business, and if you need to be providing additional benefits or incentives to increase engagement. But rather than let retention drop before acting, try some of the following strategies for improving employee retention by boosting employee engagement.

How to Improve Employee Retention via Employee Engagement

Now that you know how employee engagement impacts retention, let’s get into what you can do to increase employee engagement.

Why is employee engagement important? It touches all kinds of aspects of your business, and we’ll look at specific ways to increase engagement for the benefit of employee retention.

Solid onboarding

Help new employees start off on the right foot by creating a comprehensive onboarding program. Ensuring that your new employees are comfortable with their role and co-workers will help them start building engagement immediately.

Try sending out a new employee email to announce the arrival of new employees. This notifies existing employees that someone is new and can prepare them to help them learn if need be. You can also provide handbooks that employees can refer to throughout their employment. Check out our fun employee handbook ideas for useful examples.

Set your employees up for success from the very start by giving them a proper introduction to their co-workers and their role.

Positive company culture

A positive company culture goes hand-in-hand with a solid onboarding process. Ideally, your new employees should have:

Knowledge of your company’s structure to know where to go to ask questions; and

Confidence in your workplace culture so that they are not afraid to ask questions if they have any.

An open and accepting workplace culture can help ensure that new employees learn what they need to know. It can also help senior employees be more productive as new employees will know exactly who to go to with their questions to avoid unnecessary distractions.

Employee surveys are a fast and easy way to collect feedback on any number of topics. Conduct surveys during your onboarding process to learn your new hires’ expectations, and then compare their results with existing employees to discover gaps in how you engage your employees.

Listen to your employees

How can you be sure if your employees are engaged with their work? Try asking them!

Collecting employee feedback is a powerful tool for learning new employee engagement ideas, benefitting both you and your employees.

You get valuable insights into your employees’ experiences, and your employees get to provide their input on issues that matter to them.

Anonymous employee feedback lets your employees give feedback with greater confidence so they can be more candid with their feedback.

Now you can gain valuable insights into what matters to your employees, just by sending an email. It’s that simple.

Make your employees feel valued

Employees often cite a lack of recognition as a driving factor of a lack of engagement. Make sure you place great importance on your employees’ success, encourage them in their work, and recognize their achievements via fun employee recognition ideas.

Your employees’ success doesn’t just benefit management. Encourage employees to recognize each other when they go above and beyond their expectations. A “shout outs” portion of your company town hall is a great way to let your employees share whose work helped them, particularly in the last month of the quarter.

Give employees opportunities

Your employees want to feel like they have chances for promotion within your company. Ensure your employees know that their success matters to the entire organization by prioritizing their professional development.

Collect employee feedback to find which of your employees are interested in learning additional job skills. Speak with them and develop a strategy for accomplishing their goals, and give them an idea of their future responsibilities should they move up in the organization.

By implementing these strategies, you can foster employee engagement and retention, which will ultimately benefit your business. Engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and loyal to their employers. Prioritizing employee engagement and retention will help you build a strong and committed team that drives the success of your organization.