Seven Cost Effective Ways to Improve Employees’ Retention: The Human And Interpersonal Factors

Human and Interpersonal Skills for Employees' Retention
Seven Cost Effective Ways to Improve Employees’ Retention: The Human And Interpersonal Factors

One of the greatest challenges faced by startup businesses is recruitment and retention of committed and productive employees, who are willing to buy into the vision and grow with the company. Recruiting and training of new employees every now and then is expensive, energy sapping and time consuming. Hence, the need for every entrepreneur to ensure employees’ retention rate is enhanced as much as possible.

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study stated that employees’ retention tops the list of challenges that HR managers are most likely to face within a span of 10 years.

One of the causes of emplyees’ retention challenges in most startups is their small nature. Hence the limited associated benefits. As a result, employees are always on the lookout for bigger and more exciting job opportunities. In addition, human and interpersonal related challenges are more likely occurrences.

Research says that most of the employees leave an organization out of frustration and constant friction with their superiors or other team members (hrinasia.com). In its survey of 1,374 employees in the U.K., B2B marketplace Approved Index reported that nearly half (42%) of employees have left a job because of a bad boss and almost a third (30%) feel their current boss is a bad manager.

Human and Interpersonal Skills for Employees' Retention
Seven Cost Effective Ways to Improve Employees’ Retention: The Human And Interpersonal Factors

As a startup company, there is only little or nothing you can do about remunerations. Because you can’t offer more than you can afford. However, minimizing negative human and interpersonal factors and their effects will go a long way in overcoming your employees’ retention challenges. Below are some of the ways to improve staff retention using positive human and interpersonal approach.

1. Treat Your Employees With Respect

According to SHRM’s Job Satisfaction and Engagement research report, the majority of employees found the relationships with their immediate supervisors and senior management to be very important to their job satisfaction. Specifically, employees want to feel respected and to have a mutual trust between themselves and management (www.shrm.org).

Employer to employee relationship is symbiotic. Hence respect must be mutual. Don’t ever think you are solely doing someone a favour by employing him/her. See your employees as partners rather than beneficiaries. You need them as much as they need you.

Thomas A. Lawson, the president and CEO of FM Glogal said, If you want to improve your retention, I’d suggest focusing on cultivating three qualities: loyalty, freedom and mutual respect.”(www.industryweek.com).

When you treat your staff with respect, all other stakeholders including the customers, vendors, contractors and consultants will do the same. The employees are stakeholders in the business. They should not be seen as inferior to anyone. I am not recommending indulgence or bias, but lashing at an innocent employee because of an overbearing customer or consultant is not acceptable.

2. Understand People Are Different

No two workers can be the same. People vary in their personalities, attitudes, temperaments, backgrounds, ideologies and motivations. Your focus must be results. So far an employee gets the job done without jeopardizing quality, standards, schedules, deadlines, safety and other office ethics, he doesn’t need to be like any other person.

According to Caela Farren, Ph.D, of Mastery Works Inc., “people stayed or left an organization as a result of five management practices, which emerged as hallmarks of managers with high retention rates.” The first item on that list is: appreciating the uniqueness of each employee — values, interests, skills, knowledge, style, and work/life balance needs.

Some employees are genuinely willing to go extra mile on their own. They go outside the scope and limit of their assignments to get things done while others will not. Some will sympathize with your personal issues of concern while others will not. Some are slow learners but once they pick up they outperform others. Others are fast learners but are poor or average performers.

In all, try as much as possible to treat every employee equally. Respect and value everyone’s contributions, ideas and judgments without bias. Recognize or reward exceptional performances when possible but don’t give preferential treatments.

3. Respect People’s Privacy

Sacrifices are integral part of business. Sometimes due to tight schedules, crazy deadlines, short notices and contingencies, working extra hours or days may be necessary. However, you must try as much as possible to ensure work/life balance. Avoid making unnecessary demands from your employees.

Don’t call for extra hours or days when they are not necessary. Don’t call your employees at odd hours or weekends when it can comfortably wait till a more appropriate time. Do not deny them or encroach on their private times and lives. When sacrifices, extra hours or days are necessary, ensure you give adequate compensations.

According to a recent study by the Families and Work Institute, 22% of employees are willing to sacrifice some career advancement to enhance their personal lives. Among workers ages 18 to 24, however, that figure jumps to 34%, and 60% among very young parents (www.masteryworks.com).

Productivity is not just a result of physical impute, presence, ability or stability but also psychological and emotional well being . When you abuse and exhaust your staff unnecessarily, and interfere with their private times and lives, their relationships, health, fitness and families suffer. This tells seriously on their psyche and productivity, and hence your employees’ retention rate.

4. Be Sensitive And Supportive

JPMorgan Chase measured the impact on productivity of having a manager who creates an environment that supports informal flexibility and is sensitive to employees’ personal lives. Of employees with a sensitive manager, 84% rated their productivity as good or very good, compared with 55% of employees who do not have a sensitive manager (www.wfd.com).

Sometimes there are employees who manifested a lot of potentials during the recruitment processes. But begin to have drawbacks on the job. Sometimes this may not be a matter of capacity or commitment, but inexperience, inferiority complex and fear. Also, a performing employee may all of a sudden begins to nosedive in productivity. This may not be deliberate but a result of personal, emotional, psychological or health challenges, which are usually temporal.

Instead of becoming furious, giving up, humiliating and firing such challenged employee, why not consider offering a little support first. All such employee needs may just be a little encouragement, motivation, patience, time off or counseling, and he will come out better and stronger. Supporting employees in time of temporal personal crises wins their long term loyalties and commitments.

5. Exercise Self-Restraint

Due to the small nature of most start-ups, and the founder practically the sole administrator, entrepreneurs find it very hard to separate their personal lives and prejudices from their business. As a result sentiments rather than objectivity play a major role in the day to day decisions and activities of the company, thereby undermining professionalism.

As the founder, the buck stops at your table. Your decisions are final and unchallengeable. No devolution of powers as it is in big organization. You have the final say in the administration, finance, operations, sales, marketing, customer support, production, maintenance e.t.c. This is too much power and control. If things are not kept in check, the system is abused and people are hurt.

Also, in the bid to opt performance, ensure efficiency and judicious use of time and resources, if things are not balanced up, you may be taking undue advantage of your employees without knowing.

6. Be Fair

When the company is doing very well, don’t be selfish. Not that you should embark on spending spree, but pay your staff what is due to them. Ensure their benefits are commensurate to the status of the company. Do not live in opulence while you deprive your employees decent living.

You are not the only one doing the work, so let every contributor to the business success have a feel of it. Do not delay salaries unnecessarily without any justification. Recognize excellence and reward exceptional performance when possible.

Business is not just about employees caring about the company but also vice versa. Don’t make your employees feel all you care about is you and your business alone.

There are times things are tight, but you know you can stretch without hurting the business. That is the best time to prove that you care about your employees and their happiness is your priority. When you make sacrifices, they make sacrifices too, and the better the company’s employees’ retention rate for it.

7. Conduct Exit Interviews

There are so many reasons people have for quitting their jobs. Some are genuine while others are not. Some people can be so sentimental that they can resign because of office politics, that has nothing to do with the business owner, conditions of service or career prospects.

When a valuable employee quits his job without any concrete reasons, scheduling a meeting with him/her to understand the circumstances surrounding his/her resignation is not a bad idea. Especially when you consider the price in cash, time, energy and uncertainty involved in hiring a new promising employee. Studies predicted that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs six to nine months’ salary on average(www.shrm.com).

I am not suggesting compelling or begging. If the employee has a genuine reason, wish him/her all the best and give any support you can to succeed in his/her future endeavours. If he/she doesn’t have any concrete reasons, you can attempt persuading or motivating him or even offering a new deal. This is not only good for the business but also for the sake of the employee. You might be saving him/her from a wrong step and imminent career disaster.

This kind of meeting also helps to unveil lapses you never noticed existed in the operations of the business. As such employee is likely going to give an honest opinion about the state of the company.

Tackling negative human and interpersonal factors as a means of improving employees’ retention should be the first approach for any entrepreneur. It is simple and cost effective. You have total control and you can begin to take action right away.

It is basically about managing effectively how you treat your employees, and how they treat one another. This can be achieved by simply building a culture that encourages mutual respect, unity and team building.

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