Retaining Your Best People

RETAINING YOUR BEST PEOPLE

Guest blog is written by Emma Wynne.

When I saw that the team at White Label Recruitment were creating an Employee Retention Handbook for their clients, I thought what a great idea, and am delighted to be asked to share my thoughts on this.

I have been working in HR for 20 years now, and 13 of those have been running my own consultancy Gateway HR – with my fantastic team of HR and Learning and Development consultants. One of my key areas of interest is that of employee engagement – so much so that I did an MA in that exact topic working with one of our clients as the case study! My research was looking at what creates employee engagement in an SME and how can business owners create an environment where team members thrive – and therefore stay.

In this blog for White Label I am going to share not just this research but working with a wide range of engineering and manufacturing clients developing their managers and teams it also draws on that. There is so much I could write so I have chosen my top three that I believe give organisations the best chance of good retention. However, as this is my favourite topic, I am more than happy to talk through others with people.

One of the key factors must be that of having great managers. A wise person once said, “People don’t leave organisations, they leave managers” and in most cases that is true. So, what are you doing to ensure that your managers know how to manage and create a culture that people thrive in? So many managers are what the CMI (Chartered Management Institute) calls “accidental managers” in that they are promoted from an operational role but then given no training or support, and then we are surprised when they are not great managers. Investment in your management team will help to drive engagement and retain their team, but also retain the managers as they feel confident to do their role and supported.

My second key element would be that of communication; plenty of it and to get it right.  Certainly easier said than done and it needs to be well planned and thought through. 99% of issues we help clients with will have an element of communication gone wrong within it. Whether that is communicating change, sharing the strategy, or simply keeping people up to date and involved. Make sure that your team have a voice; by this, I mean genuine 2-way communication. Do people feel confident to share ideas, concerns, and questions? This is even more important in manufacturing environments when usually mass emails and intranet are not an option as it will miss a lot of the workforce.

My final point is that team members need a sense of feeling valued and that you have a genuine concern for their health and wellbeing. It is basic human nature that we all want to feel valued and wanted, and the great news for business is that this does not need to cost a penny. I’m talking about the fundamentals of making sure you acknowledge your employees when you see them, making time to speak to them, and showing a genuine interest in them as individuals not simply as a resource in your business. Best of all make sure that you thank people for a job well done; in nearly all studies into motivation, recognition comes top in terms of what people want – again this can have no cost attached to it.

If you want to explore this area in more detail and discuss the engagement in your Organisation, get in contact with us at Gateway HR on 01536 215240 or email emma@gatewayhr.com

To access White Label Recruitment’s Employee Retention Handbook, visit here