The key to a business’ success and growth lies in how happy its employees are. However, the retail segment has been seeing a lot of employee turnover in the last few years – a sign that should be extremely worrisome for employers who need to start thinking of ways to retain talent in their organizations.
The retail sector has seen employees getting increasingly frustrated due to a number of factors including working on the weekends and holidays – of late. Cut-throat competition, politics, high work pressure all add to the stress. Some of the common signs of a stressed out employee are low self-confidence, poor sanity and deprived health.
Employers need to define a strategy that gives benefits to employees and they need to groom their corporate culture to retain the best talent and brains in the industry to increase turnover.
Strategies to Retain Good Employees:
1.Tone down office politics: While most companies already understand that productivity, and creativity increase only when the employees are happy, and engaged in fruitful work, they need to work on toning down office politics to provide a safe and secure working environment.
2. Spotting Talent: Companies need to hire managers who can identify talent in the workplace. The idea is to keep a lookout for smart, self confident employees who focus on the work and possess the requisite skills to make a sale almost every time a customer walks in. Once talent is identified, companies need to show appreciation and help them grow in the workplace.
3. Positive Work Culture: An employee spends half his day in the workplace on an average. Apart from offering a competitive salary, an office should be comfortable, so that an employee is tempted to put in longer hours.
4. Open Communication: Talk to employees. Let them vent, and discuss disputes. Listen to all sides and then offer constructive solutions. Make sure an environment of fear and bullying is not created. This will help foster a positive work environment and abate poor performance.
5. Focus on Goals: A major reason for low productivity is that the employees are unaware of their project goal. In many software development companies, employees actually don’t know what to achieve due to the lack of communication with their managers which makes them unable to clarify their goals.
Having every employee knowing what role they should perform in a project at the very beginning will reduce the office politics, thereby increasing confidence in every employee when they work together.
6. Timely Rewards: Don’t keep employee achievement rewards until the end of the year. Give them small rewards and recognition every few months. Also include them in goals and motivate them to achieve. If employers are successful in telling hired talent how important they are for business, then sales are bound to increase.
Companies often gives sales bonus to their employees, but offer incentives for working longer hours, especially on weekends and holidays.
7. Some Fun Is Essential: An employee works best when his/her workplace is comfortable. However, HR should restrict fun and games to a point where no one is upset or hurt by unparliamentary remarks or comments. Striking a balance is important.
8 . Offer Competitive Salaries: Every employee seeks a competitive salary that makes them work with a company. To attract the right professionals and talented individuals, offer a salary that is at least at par with the industry, or slightly higher if the employee is well worth it.
9. Reward The Right People: This is a good opportunity to gain employee trust. Continuously monitor work, track employee progress. Understand contribution as a team and an individual and then reward those who have put in their best efforts to achieve company goals. This motivates others to work hard. For this, an employer will need to create a transparent system.
Must Read
