How To Reduce Employee Turnover: 10 Actionable Tips To Improve Retention

High employee turnover can be costly for a business, both financially and socially. Constantly having to recruit new talent can take up a lot of your company’s time, money, and resources, and dissatisfied or disgruntled employees are more likely to leave negative reviews about working for your business online. 

By making your company a more desirable place to work, you can reap the benefits of low staff turnover: 

• Happy, loyal employees are more likely to leave a positive review of your company online and through word-of-mouth, improving company reputation. 
• Less time and resources are spent on recruitment, lowering your costs.
• Top performers staying at the company avoids the risk of losing key skills and experience, helping you maintain an output of top-quality work.  

When you are recruiting new talent, you should make sure you are hiring the ‘right’ candidate for the job. This means the person should align with the company’s values and beliefs while also meeting all the necessary job requirements. 

Making sure prospective employees understand the culture of your company during the interview stage can help you decide whether someone will fit in with your team socially as well as professionally. 

Implementing new procedures into your hiring process will allow you to make more informed decisions about who to hire:

• Offering office visits to candidates can indicate how they would behave in your company’s work environment. 
• Allowing a peer to interview candidates can show how they interact with the people they would be working with on a daily basis.
• Asking behaviour-focused questions can highlight how that individual approaches common challenges that come up in the workplace, outside of their specific job role. 

Hiring individuals who fit in with your company socially and professionally can help create a more positive working environment where everyone gets on and works well together. Ultimately, this will increase staff satisfaction and reduce turnover.

Employees can dedicate a lot of their time and effort to help make your business run smoothly and efficiently. If they feel their hard work is being overlooked or underappreciated, it can cause resentment and encourage your workers to look for opportunities elsewhere. 

Implementing strategies that make your employees feel seen and appreciated can boost employee mood and productivity. Introducing regular performance reviews, providing constructive feedback, and starting initiatives like employee of the month can create a supportive, encouraging environment that people want to work in.

You could also reward your employees with exciting team away days that give your staff a break from the mundanity of the office while improving employee engagement and teamworking skills.

Staff will be more likely to stick around if they know there are opportunities for them to progress in their career. Employees want to feel like they are growing in their role rather than stagnating. Implementing clear career progression opportunities can help individuals feel rewarded for their work and loyalty. 

It is therefore important that employees and managers are clear on the career progression opportunities available, as well as the steps that need to be followed to reach these goals.

Encouraging your employees to have a good work-life balance can reduce stress levels and boost their overall mood. Happier employees mean higher job satisfaction, which will ultimately reduce staff turnover. 

You can support employees in having a healthy work-life balance by implementing good employee benefits, setting clear boundaries between their work-life and home-life, and not expecting employees to always be on call outside of work hours.

Having flexibility in your working practices can improve work-life balance for your staff and reduce employee turnover. Introducing flexible working hours or hybrid and remote working gives your employees more agency to plan their lives; staff want to be able to work around childcare, hobbies, and appointments. 

According to People Management, 77% of employees reported flexible working as more important than a pay rise. This goes to show that financial compensation is no longer the main motivating factor for individuals to remain at a job – work-life balance is now considered more important.

You can invest in the development of your employees with in-person classroom training, virtual training, and on-demand training. Offering continuous learning opportunities can be beneficial in two ways: 

1. Your workforce will be constantly upskilling, providing them with extra skills that can be applied to their everyday work output. 
2. Employee engagement and satisfaction will increase, reducing staff turnover. 

For learning opportunities to be effective, you should tailor them to your employees. Take time to understand their personal goals, strengths, and areas for improvement, and use this to help inform what learning opportunities you offer.

Developing a good company culture is important in reducing staff turnover as it can boost employee morale, engagement, and happiness. ‘Company culture’ refers to the different values, working practices, and behaviours that mould the way your company functions. 

One way you can work towards a good company culture is by developing a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy that aligns your company’s internal values with broader social, economic, and environmental goals. You can get involved in initiatives that your employees truly care about by organising charity team building events and CSR team building events. 

Find out more about how to improve your company culture with our online guide.

The development of soft skills is just as important as the development of role-specific skills. That’s why, as an employer, you should consider encouraging the personal growth of your employees as well as their professional growth. 

Supporting your employees to develop their soft skills will not only make them feel like you are invested in them on a personal level, but will also teach them transferable skills that can improve their work output. 

Staff members who feel cared for and supported by their employer will be more likely to remain in their job.

Employee engagement is the level of commitment your employees feel towards you as an employer. Higher levels of employee engagement typically mean lower levels of staff turnover.

Monitoring your employee engagement levels is important as you can use the data you collect to address any issues. Sending out regular staff engagement surveys, organising focus groups, and implementing processes that ensure feedback is listened to and acted upon can help you recognise where improvements can be made. 

Learn more about how to improve employee engagement with our 10 effective strategies.

When it comes to reducing staff turnover, data is your friend. Analysing and learning from past staff members who left your company can help reduce future turnover. 

Collecting data from staff members leaving the company can help you identify why people are leaving and what, if anything, went wrong to make them want to leave. This data is invaluable in understanding where your weaknesses are as an employee and where you should be focusing your attention to make improvements for future staff members. 

Conducting exit interviews as part of your offboarding processes is an easy way to collect this data and make it a part of your routine.

Organising exciting and unique team building events can be an accessible, quick solution for reducing staff turnover. As well as being a fun change of scenery for your staff, effective team building events can help touch on the key elements that make employees feel more satisfied in their job:

• Company culture: team building events can help improve your company culture by boosting team morale and employee wellness.
• Staff development: team building can help your employees develop a range of soft skills, including teamworking and problem-solving skills.
• Employee engagement: charity and CSR team building events can improve employee engagement by supporting broader social and environmental initiatives that staff feel passionately about.

At Team Tactics, we offer a variety of team building events that are tailored to your needs. Whether you are looking for charity team building events or wellness team building activities, our team of experts are dedicated to delivering unforgettable experiences for you and your employees.

Explore our range of award-winning corporate team building activities today.