How to retain your HR team?

If you want your employees to grow and move closer to their goals, it is imperative that you understand why retaining HR professionals is so crucial. It outlines strategies you can use to make this work.
Offering learning and growth opportunities, and communicating feedback effectively are some of the ways through which you can retain human resource talent. Besides that, you can offer your employees incentives.
These are some of the factors that will benefit your high-performing staff and encourage them to stay.

In this guide, we have discussed the following topics to give you some basic information:

• What is the importance of retaining employees?
• What are the Strategies used in retaining employees?
• Why do employees leave?

Importance of retaining employees

One way of producing quality outcomes at any workplace is by considering customer retention which will result in an increase in revenue, customer satisfaction, increased employee engagement, and embracing teamwork. Other than these benefits, there are other advantages to retaining HR employees, which are discussed below.

1. Superb customer service experience

Customer experience is the memory of your organization in the customer’s mind, from pre-sale to post-sale support. When your employees, especially those in the HR department, stay long with your organization, they become familiar with your processes that impact the customer.

New employees will take time to adapt to your organization. Along the way, they may make customer service errors, fail to solve customer problems and take a long time to accomplish tasks as expected. This may impact negatively the customer experience.

2. Prevent the loss of skills and valuable information

When you let your employee(s) leave your organization they take their skills with them, and valuable information about the customer. This may hinder the transfer of knowledge and succession and result in other workers attempting to leave the organization. In the event the employee joins a competitor organization, you are likely to lose some customers.

3. Decrease in turnover cost

It’s very hard and costly to get talented, competent employees. When an employee leaves, the organization will have to spend money to replace them and train the new employee, which will cause a decrease in productivity.

Getting newly hired employees to be 100% productive is unrealistic or very difficult, and they need some handholding as they learn how things are done in their new organization until they are able to work independently. Most of the new hires produce less than 50% in their first three to four months.

Strategies used in retaining HR employees

When you have top talent in your organization, you do not want them to leave because they can maximize profit for you. Some of the ways to retain HR professionals in your company are:

1. Give them room to develop their careers and grow

Providing your employees with growth opportunities is one of your responsibilities as a professional. Allow them to explore other talents and skills that they may have, even if it is not part of HR. This will show them how much you value them regardless of their career path.

You should also give them a chance to learn. You can organize training sessions that remind them of their roles and responsibilities. It will also open their eyes and aid in critical thinking. Encourage them to have time for workshops and both internal and external courses.

2. Offer incentives

One of the most effective ways to appreciate your employees and recognize that work has been done is by offering incentives. This motivates employees to do their finest when performing any task, and there is nothing more satisfying than having the confidence that employees are doing their best. You can give them a chance to work on larger projects since they have gained your trust.

You can also offer incentives by recognizing their dedication to work via company chats or emails. In this form, the costs are the lowest, and planning is the simplest. However, this is not all; you can give them monetary incentives, bonuses, and salary increases.

3. Choose leaders wisely

Ensure that the leader of any team is the right person. Your employees need the right person to work with and lead them. You should choose a leader who is skilled and well-trained in order to maximize the individual strengths of the individuals. Team leaders should be assertive and know how to make decisions.

They should also be able to set clear goals and work with everyone in the team. You should ensure quality supervision by making sure that your manager has excellent communication and management skills.

4. Memorable onboarding experience

You should create a memorable onboarding process as this makes employees feel recognized as part of the organization. The onboarding experience is not only significant on the first day, but also for the remaining days. You can provide the newly hired employees with resources that can familiarize them with their roles and responsibilities, the working protocol, and the organization at large.

You can give them someone to work with as they get familiar with the new environment. Digital tools and virtual communication also make their experience much better.

5. Effective communication

You should communicate your feedback to employees effectively and often. This will enable them to know where they excel and where they need to work harder. Negative criticism is an important part of growth; however, you should be careful how you handle it. One effective method of negative criticism is the sandwich method.

You start with a positive comment, follow it with a negative one, and then finish with a positive one. This will leave them feeling that even though you noted their weakness, their strength has also been recognized.

Why do employees leave?

Employees may leave your organization for a variety of reasons. There are two categories of employee departures; these are voluntary and involuntary departures. Voluntary departures are; some follow a spouse who has been delocalized, some find a new job, some quit due to a personal or work-related issue, and some return to school.

Involuntary departures are those who leave the job as a result of being laid off or terminated by the organization. Other reasons why an employee may leave your organization are listed below, along with measures your organization should take to prevent them.

1. Planned change

Some employees work with a predetermined plan of quitting the organization at some point for example if they get a better job opportunity, if their spouse becomes pregnant, or for any other reason. However, an organization can alter the plans of some employees by increasing rewards or responding positively to employees; needs. For example, a company can give more generous parental leave or have family-friendly policies, if the exits are a result of family-related plans.

2. Employee dissatisfaction

An employee(s) will be dissatisfied if they are not recognized, work under unfriendly working conditions, or are paid less than the work they do. In order to curb this, organizations should monitor the attitudes of employees at the workplace and address the reasons behind their departures accordingly.

3. An unpleasant experience

If an employee(s) encounters a negative experience like a difficult supervisor or does not receive a promotion, they may decide to leave their jobs unintentionally. Organizations should analyze problems, and then offer solutions that will persuade employees to be committed.

4. Better alternatives

There may be an irresistible offer from another company that tempts the employee to leave your organization. You have to be more competitive in terms of quality working environment, developmental opportunities, or rewards to prevent departure.

Conclusion:

Whether you are a mid-sized enterprise or an established multinational firm in Qatar, all companies face the common challenge of identifying, attracting, and retaining talented individuals within the firm, especially if they belong to the talent acquisition team. It is therefore imperative that employees are rewarded for their contributions to the company with proper exposure and investment in their development. Your employees are your company’s most valuable asset, and investing in them will retain your clients.