January is a time when many feel compelled to make real changes to areas of their lives they are unhappy with.
People may be questioning how they can improve their lives, complete their goals, and achieve their new year resolutions. They may try Veganuary to live a more ethical lifestyle or dry January to be healthier, but one resolution that can have a big impact on businesses is ‘new year, new job’.
Employees that are seeking a change in the new year may be looking for a new position, so it’s vital that businesses and managers act fast if they want to retain their top talent.
Here are some top tips for managers looking to retain staff who have resolved to get a new job:
Show them you are committed to change
Your employees will want to see a change in their lives or at least some growth, and if you do not show your commitment to change as a business, they may feel that their role is stagnant. Managers could sit down with their teams at the start of the year to create a list of new year resolutions. Allow your team to express what changes they would like to see and create a plan to implement these.
Celebrate achievements
Your new year may be off to a busy start, making it easy to forget to celebrate your team’s achievements. But doing this is a great way to ensure that your employees feel valued. Why not use the new year to celebrate all the successes that your employees have had over the past 12 months. Hold a team meeting and celebrate each team member’s contribution personally.
Set realistic and achievable goals for the year ahead
Start the new year by setting realistic goals for the year ahead. What do your employees want to achieve, how can they improve and grow in their work, and how can you support them with this?
Evaluate your own management style
As the saying goes, ‘people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers’. Now is a good time to step back and consider if your own management style could be a source of frustration. Could you support your team better? Is there a tendency to micromanage? Are you providing effective and prompt feedback? Does your team feel valued? Answering these difficult questions could pinpoint specific areas that are negatively impacting staff retention.
Have clear succession plans
Succession planning is key for retaining your team’s top talent and futureproofing your business. Setting out clear succession plans and providing training and development where needed will not only give you a seamless movement of talent across the team and business, but also help your employees to see their future progression routes.
Don’t wait for the exit interview!
Waiting for an exit interview to find out why your employee is leaving is too late. Make sure you have regular catch ups with your team to solve any issues they have straight away before they become a factor in their resignations.
Tangible rewards
The above tips are great ways to make your employee feel valued, show them that change is possible within their current position, and that they don’t need to move jobs to see growth. However, if your company’s salary and benefits package is not competitive, regardless of what you do as a manager, you will most likely struggle to retain your best team members.
Review salary and benefits packages
At the end of 2022, we conducted a survey of over 500 professionals to find out what salaries and benefits they receive – as well as the ones they find most attractive. We found that 44% of professionals are unhappy with their salary, with the most cited reason for this being they feel they do so much more than their job role.
While it may be the case that employees have had to take on additional responsibilities over the past few years due to many businesses streamlining and making redundancies during the pandemic, it is important for managers to recognise when their employees are feeling overworked and underappreciated. The new year is a good time to look at the salaries your team are getting and consider if a pay rise is appropriate for the work they do.
We also asked participants what their top five most attractive company benefits were. Annual leave/paid time off was the most popular desired benefit, with two-thirds of respondents stating that they find it attractive – signalling to businesses that increasing holiday allowance is a good way to retain staff.
51% of respondents listed health insurance in their top-five benefits, while performance bonuses (48%), annual salary increments (45%) and a higher-than-normal pension (44%) also featured prominently in professionals’ top five. In addition to these, flexible working – which was once seen as a company perk – is now an expected part of a role for most professionals. Those that do not offer some form of flexible working, whether that’s remote or hybrid, will find themselves losing staff to competitors who do.
There are many ways that you can encourage staff retention this new year, and managers should make this a priority. However, in today’s competitive climate, where the power is in jobseekers’ hands, businesses need to look at the salaries they are offering and make sure their benefits packages stand out from the crowd if they want to retain their best employees.
To find out what salaries and benefits you should be offering your team, download our free 2024 salary guide here.
