How to retain employees and enhance job enrichment

The Insync Surveys 2012 Retention Review into why employees resign surveyed more than 11,000 employees from 40 Australian organisations over a four and a half year period, focusing on those who left their job between January 2011 and April 2012. It found that lack of job enrichment is the leading cause of staff turnover.

The research found that employees leave an organization or business:

• primarily due to the job itself, and not because of pay or relationships with managers or peers, or
• because of one or more factors, such as job enrichment, interpersonal, structural, home life, & environmental.

                               

The average Australian turnover rate of 18 per cent costs organisations with 100 employees around $1 million every year but they could save around $280,000 annually, by reducing turnover by just five per cent.

To improve your chances of retaining your employees and enhance job enrichment, employers can:

• Provide adequate resources for each employee to perform well. ie IT, communication technology, and personnel training and development.
• Create a supportive corporate culture. This includes peer support networks, supportive management, have a culture that fosters the ability for people to openly share their knowledge
• Ensure a free flow of information, and try to eliminate secrecy.
• Provide enough freedom to facilitate job excellence. Encourage and reward employee initiative by providing adequate recognition, appreciation, and other motivators.
• Provide professional development and skill improvement opportunities. This could include paid education at universities or on the job training.
• Provide job variety. This can be done by job sharing or job rotation programmes.
• Offer meaningful work as part of each role and link each role to the success of the organisation
• Be flexible in how, when and where people can complete their work.
• Have career development plans for your staff
• Ensure that new employees are offered sufficient training and do not overload them with a full workload the minute they walk in the door.

There are also other steps an organisation can take to boost retention and reduce staff turnover such as:

• Ensure that you are measuring turnover, and understanding whether it is the high performers who are departing, or the poor performers.   
• Create enriching and meaningful jobs – this allows organisations to match staff with the right job for their skills and interests, thus reducing turnover
• Be flexible – be accommodating of changing life circumstances - This is the second biggest contributor to staff turnover. Be creative in the use of both short and long-term flexible work arrangements.
• Put a value on transparency – trust and honesty are important in a team.
• Impartiality is also essential to employee retention. Everyone must believe they all have the same chance and every decision must be unbiased.
• Recognise performance – and offer rewards that are not just contingent on a behaviour or result. Think outside the square and consider other types of rewards – access rewards such as discounted insurance or mobile phone packages.
• Where possible, empower staff members to make decisions and take ownership of what they do.
• Conducting exit interviews and regular staff surveys, seeking informal feedback from managers and establishing a retention strategy.

 Reducing staff turnover should not be considered solely a HR issue, all areas and levels of management should give this attention in order to boost employee retention and ultimately help the bottom line of your business. Giving due attention to all areas of the hiring & training process,  actively working to maintain and improve staff morale and having an effective employee retention will go a long way in preventing a high employee turnover.

For help with retention programs, performance reviews, or any staffing issues, please contact Annette at End2End Business Solutions for a customised solution.