Easy Ways to Retain Top Talent
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If you wait until an exit interview to find out why a valuable employee has decided to move on, you've missed
a golden opportunity — not just to keep a productive member of your team but to identify and fix issues
within your organization before you lose others. Instead, touching base with employees about what
motivates them while they’re still on staff is part of a key strategy in gaining an edge in today’s tight talent
market: employee retention.

Start retaining employees from the moment you hire them
It’s not uncommon for new hires to leave shortly after starting a new job. Employees who had a negative new
hire onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for new opportunities in the near future. On the flip
side, organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent. Providing a
solid onboarding, from the moment a candidate accepts a job offer, is one of the most important things you
can do to set your new hires up for long-term engagement.

Hire jobs, not people.
“Don’t hire people for the job, hire a job for the person” It’s easy, forget the checkmarks and the traditional
interview questions, you need to get to the heat of the person to really understand their motives and true
motivation. Customize a position to fit the individual based on their strengths and interests, in order to do so
it’s imperative to ask the right questions during the interview process. Those answers will help you
understand the individual better and those interests will determine if the person will be happy at work, which
will result in retention, higher productivity and overall a thriving environment for the person to grow
independently but also help grow the company.

Gather employee insights
Employee satisfaction surveys and stay interviews allow you to ask people exactly what it would take to make
them stay, while exit surveys can help you learn exactly why they’re leaving. This will allow you to identify
trends, so you can prioritize your biggest problem areas—as well as some low-hanging fruit to make quick
wins.

Update your compensation plan regularly
Over half of candidates say a competitive compensation package was the most attractive factor when
considering a new job. If you’re not adjusting your compensation plan regularly, you could be losing
candidates for two reasons. First, because candidates can quickly learn what they could be paid elsewhere.
Second, because new hires may very well be offered market rates in order to close them, while long-term
employees have not been adjusted and are still earning last year’s market rates.

Provide career pathing and employee development
Show employees they have a worthwhile future at your organization by mapping out a career path and
helping them get there through employee development opportunities. This carries the added bonuses of
helping your organization overcome the skills gap in the labor market and providing strong internal
candidates to move into key leadership positions as they become available.

Revisit your employee benefits and perks
Fifty one percent of employees say they would switch to a job that allows them flex time, and 37 percent
would switch to a job that allows them to work off-site at least part of the time. Fifty three percent of
employees who get paid vacation would leave for more at another company. Exact preferences may vary by
your workforce, but it’s probably safe to say that most people would appreciate a better work-life balance.

Finding and closing on your top-choice candidate is no longer enough—now you have to do everything in
your power to retain them. In this war for talent, effectively retaining your employees ultimately requires
that you think strategically about the employee experience.