Staff Retention- top tips on protecting your greatest assets

Competition for the best staff in the creative/engineering industries is getting stronger every year. Retaining your most talented and hardest working employees is crucial for the long term success of your organisation.

Losing key staff places many kinds of strain on a business, from the obvious financial strains of staff replacement and recruitment fees, to those more difficult to quantify. These include time and money spent training new staff in your systems, developing both internal and external relationships, workplace culture and perhaps worst of all in the creative and technical industries, knowledge drain.

Five key staff retention strategies:

1. Track and record staff retention Conduct exit interviews in a completely confidential yet friendly manner — encourage exiting staff to open up on exactly why they are leaving. A database of when and why staff leave will be an invaluable resource. It enables an organisation to compare how it is performing against the competition and highlights which managers may need extra relationship training. Retaining good employees can be difficult to achieve unless you understand why people choose to leave your organisation.

2. Get the right people to begin with As difficult as it may be, recruit for cultural fit and attitude first and then skills. Typically your future leaders will embrace your cultural values and have the skills needed for the delivery of key projects.

3. Create a fulfilling environment People who have chosen a career in design or engineering are both creative and inquisitive by nature. An environment where they are able to express their creativity and increase their knowledge is key to job satisfaction — it can even be more important than financial gain.

4. Increase workplace flexibility Not only does this mean remote working arrangements but also accommodating non-work needs and responsibilities of employees. Does a staff member want to attend a lecture, pick up their children from school or regular sporting event? Look at ways to cater to this need and they will be extremely grateful. Overly rigid conditions can drive employees to greener pastures.

5. Stay on top of your employees’ moods. Nobody likes working in an environment with undue stress, educate your managers to look for indicators of stress amongst staff and in ways to diffuse potential conflict situations.

Always remember, a job isn’t just a salary. Sometimes you will need to increase an employee’s package to retain them but time spent understanding an employee’s needs and career aspirations will pay true long-term dividends.