Employment retention in 2024: Strategies every business should consider

Employee retention and engagement are crucial factors to consider in business. With the demand for job candidates increasing across the UK, a successful employee retention strategy is essential in order to keep your organisations best talent.

An Employee Retention Strategy involves strategic actions by businesses to ensure their employees stay motivated, engaged, and awarded for their continuous hard and productive work that benefits the organisation. Combining a safe and happy work environment with longer-term job benefits will encourage employees to remain within an organisation and develop fundamental relationships within the business.

Here are some important employee retention strategies that every business should consider in 2024...

The essentials

Some of the most essential and most recognised employee benefits are providing excellent and fair salary pay scales and workplace pensions. Many people who take on a new job look at their starting wage and the ways they can progress within the company to get onto the next pay scale.

You should also consider providing competitive numbers of annual leave days, sick pay rates, and perhaps consider things like private healthcare as employee incentives. Partnerships and benefit programmes for your employees further down the line of their employment are also great contract additions to show the level of growth that can be achieved within the organisation. These essential benefits are vital in attracting and attaining the best talent within your organisation.

Hire the right people

One of the most important factors in ensuring employee retention is hiring the right people for your organisation in the first place. Be as transparent as you can about the job role and highlight your organisations morals, ethics, and culture to help enable you to choose the right candidate.

Finding the right candidates that match the specifics of your job role, will help minimise the risk of employing an individual who cannot live up to company expectations. Many organisations need an individual who is driven on a personal and professional level and will cope with the reality of a professional job role.

Flexibility

The ability to be able to work flexitime or hybrid working (part-time at home and part-time in the office) is increasingly sought after. Enabling and facilitating flexibility can considerably improve the lives of your employees, giving them a better work-life balance and boosting the chances of long-term employee retention.

Working environment

We all want to enjoy and look forward to going to work. Creating a pleasant working environment can be achieved by the following:

• Encouraging a positive workplace attitude – coaching rather than criticising, implementing strategies against bullying or harassment of any sort, valuing employee opinions, promoting teamwork and positive employee relationships, being appreciative, and even just saying 'thank you' every once in a while can make a huge difference.
• Being transparent – giving employees feedback, asking for opinions, and keeping them updated with ongoings in the business.
• Setting achievable goals and offering rewards for achieving these goals.
• Not contacting employees outside of normal working hours.
• Ensuring that the work environment is physically safe, pleasant, and enhances mental and physical health as well as accessible for all employees.
• Organising team-building activities and employee events.
• Having a designated relaxation space where employees can go for breaks.

Training

Providing staff with the opportunity to learn new skills and qualifications not only benefits individual employees, but also your business as a whole.

Training can go a long way in retaining staff and making them feel valued. Not only that, but it also gives them something to aspire to and encourages them to stay with your business for longer.

Looking to boost your business with effective workplace training? We've got you covered. Here at iHasco, we're helping over 12,000 businesses just like yours to make their workplace training simple. With our library of over 180 e-learning courses, we can help prepare your business and staff for anything.

Why not get started today by claiming a free, no-obligation trial and checking out our courses? Alternatively, you can request a bespoke quote and our experts will be in touch to discuss your training requirements.