If, as out of hand as the ending of Game of Thrones was, fear not, you can still control your top talent from leaving your organisation. And, no, we don’t mean with spells and sorcery…
Business leaders often say that they want their organisations to grow, but how many of them say that they want their top talent to stop churning?
More and more research shows that to replace a top performer is costly. And, in a fiercely competitive job market, the battle lines have been drawn and your competitors are after your best-performing employees.
The much-spoken-about Millennials and Gen Z cohorts like their older counterparts want to feel valued, appreciated for their contribution and above all, they want to be happy at work. The workforce is more complex and distributed than ever before and a one-size-fits-all incentive or rewards model that previously worked on Boomers just simply won’t help you retain your best employees.
Employee recognition must meet the basic requirement: a human connection. Without it, there simply is no relatable aspect that employees; specifically, the Millennials and Gen Z care to think about for more than five seconds. Having said this, it is important to note that your recognition programme should factor in remote workers – a segment that will continue to rise as a result of new and different jobs, emerging technologies and organisations adopting the agile approach.
When designing your recognition programme, partner with an expert to advise you on the full spectrum of the recognition programme. This will help you to avoid any pitfalls as it relates to the various metrics for the programme. Pro Tip: For Millennials and Gen Z, remember, when designing your programme to make it accessible from a mobile device and build in ways to socialise with peers and to share accolades easily.
How can you stop attrition?
Unfortunately, talented employees are often headhunted, poached or (no, not fried) leave organisations for other opportunities. The result: lost expertise and a gaping hole in your best-in-breed talent pool. So just how can you combat your top talent from saying adieus?
The thing about employee retention is that you have to give people a good reason to stay. They want to know that their voice counts – and that it’s been listened to.
Every employee is human. And, every human has, specific to themselves, strengths, concepts, weakness and needs. Your upper percentile talent pool is no different. They want you to take note of their achievements, and they want you to recognise it in front of their peers. We’re human, we’re built like that.
Employee recognition platforms can help you engage your employees and help you reduce churn by helping you validate behaviours that are aligned to business outcomes and adding rewards to really say, ‘thank you’. Making it public shows you mean it, and fosters a culture of social recognition that, yip you guessed it, drives employee engagement.
Why you need to recognise milestones…
Perhaps you’re saying, ‘look I have a quarterly awards evening’. To that, we say, ‘bravo’. But consider an employee who has delivered stellar work in January of that year and only gets recognised in May. The moment’s gone and the opportunity to engage that employee along with it.
It’s kind of like buyer’s remorse. Imagine you’ve just bought an amazing new PC – paid at checkout and bam, they hit with a ‘delivery in 10 days. Whilst there’s no doubt the PC experience will still be amazing, the highs of the ‘delivery in 24 hours’ expectation has also subdued your excitedness and your willingness to purchase more items.
Now consider the ‘purchase-more-items’ idea – that’s much the same as that employee’s thought process will move along in terms of his/her effort: ‘Why bother, nobody appreciates my hard work, I have to wait and see if I get an award in May.’ Starting to see the whole picture?
Employee recognition can be formal or informal and various nomination types do exist. The important aspect is that you use an employee recognition platform as a strategic tool to make a point of saying ‘thank you’. Praise your employees and get creative with emojis, rewards and on-the-spot gifts to convey a sentiment of ‘a job well done’.
Ask – Feedback is your friend.
Ask, ask then ask some more. Getting feedback is so important and if you are serious about retaining your best employees, it involves listening to them. An employee recognition platform that is holistic and able to run long surveys every quarter or short, heartbeat surveys to understand the pulse of the business at any time.
Use this data and track suggestions and feedback to remedy things that may be going awry within your organisation. An interactive online dashboard is an excellent way to measure all feedback and reports. It enables you to provide individual feedback and provide business intelligence to the executive management.
Understand the whole employee.
Bring into focus the whole employee when you are trying to understand how to retain them. Employees are people and people have lives outside of work. With the advent of even more social networks, apps and streaming services, the line between work and play is grey. Be considerate to your employees’ well-being and health – they are certainly more likely to be engaged at work and go above their standard performance – if they know that their wellness is being considered.
Want to retain your team of top talent?
Start by investing in an employee recognition and engagement platform that aligns business outcomes with culture. Don’t wait for your employees to churn, create an organisation that’s employee-centric and one where their values align with your organisation’s.
Values and performance-based recognition is key to retaining your top talent. It strengthens the ideas that they are humans first and recognises their individual value that they bring to your organisation.
Find out how bountiXP can help you design and implement a dual-purpose recognition programme that aligns your people for success leading to great business results. Ongoing engagement, real-time results and a world of rewards are at your fingertips, every day without the need for multiple platforms. Simply click the button below to get started