Employee Retention Ideas for Executives

Nowadays, it’s more common for people to change jobs than ever before. The age of remaining with a single company for the long haul is gone. So, what is it that drives people to make so many career changes?

Arguably, we’re living in an age of more diverse job opportunities in a wide array of industries. It’s unsurprising that many people choose to seek out work that they find more fulfilling.

However, I believe there’s one other main reason people leave their jobs—the work they enjoy and the employment they thrive in. Much workplace dissatisfaction stems from leadership shortcomings. Employees often quit their bosses, not their jobs.

This isn’t a very popular idea, but it’s worth investigating. As a manager, business owner, or company executive, are you the reason your employee retention rates are down? Do you push workers out because you’re unapproachable, a “helicopter boss,” or unclear about your expectations?

Here are six employee retention ideas to assess where you stand and how to make positive changes to work better with your team.

1. Seek and react to honest feedback about your communication style.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s the #1 thing that will make or break a work environment. Ask your people for their input and listen to what they tell you. Your tone and communication style are equally as important as what you say, so be conscious of those things, too.

Consider getting feedback from a 360-degree assessment on how you are doing. Based on your learning, reassess your attitude and adopt a different and more supportive approach.

2. Create realistic and understandable goals.

Your teammates want to be successful, and they yearn for well-thought-out performance goals and a regular discussion about how they are doing.

List out your values and communicate them to your team. This is especially important for millennial colleagues. They want feedback and meaningful, constructive criticism.

3. Include your teammates before making decisions.

Strive for 100% inclusion. This doesn’t mean allowing chaos or relying on committee decisions. Instead, ask for ideas and solutions and give ample credit to those who contribute.

Also, it supports creativity. Unfortunately, organizations naturally squash creativity – often unintentionally. Your company’s contributors are probably different than you, so use this to your advantage. Find a way to harness the creative energy in your team. Listen carefully and be open. A clear policy of inclusion and creativity should always be part of your employee retention programs.

4. Carefully explain the rules of the game and follow them.

If you make the rules for the team and then don’t personally follow them, you will lose your team’s respect, which will affect your employee retention rates.

Consistently talk about expanded limits for decision-making. Employees want to know the extent of their authority when you aren’t around. Be more supportive of personal initiative, risk-taking, and mistakes.

Try implementing a system such as “Unless I Hear Differently” (or UIHD) to keep things rolling smoothly and empower your team to make decisions using their intuition and logic.

5. Pump up your energy level.

Believe it or not, your team prays that you will have great energy, passion, and optimism. No matter your industry, making a conscious effort to orchestrate fun is a great idea to retain talent. Manufacture exciting things to do in the workplace. Keep it light and funny, and laugh as a group at the crazy things that happen.

6. Create variety in jobs.

Most people hate routine work – perhaps this applies to you, too!

Another employee retention strategy is to find ways to give your workers different projects and the chance to contribute beyond their current jobs. When a team member does something well, openly and energetically celebrate their success. Take the opportunity to trumpet what worked well instead of finding other reasons to complain about things that went wrong in different areas.

The main takeaway here: Find a way to pan those gold nuggets of success.

As an executive or business owner, you don’t have to be the reason your employees leave for other opportunities. You can create a supportive and vibrant company culture by using some of the abovementioned ideas regarding employee retention. If you’d like to do further research, The Law of Magnetism by John Maxwell is an excellent resource.

For more expertise on improving your talent retention strategies and leadership skills, fill out my contact form for a complimentary one-hour coaching session with me.

Coach Dave