Employee Retention

As the economy improves, employee retention becomes more of an issue for small business owners. Not only are there more employment opportunities, employees feel more confident taking a chance on changing careers. Additionally, a number of employees will consider opening their own businesses. The implications are huge. Not only are there costs associated with hiring and training new employees, but if your customers follow your former employee the costs can be even more catastrophic. Employee retention is key. When we started our company and began building our online inventory system for small businesses like yours, we knew retaining key employees would be important. So we devised a plan and thought it would be wise to share our secrets with you.

In a previous post, we offered some tips to improve employee retention. This is such a hot topic right now, that we are back with even more low to no cost suggestions.

    • Recognize your employees. Everyone likes to feel appreciated and to be recognized for a job well done. Look for ways to celebrate employee accomplishments and successes. This doesn’t have to be the old tried and true employee of the month designation. In fact, more frequent recognition is even better. A previous employer had a stuffed animal that moved around the office. Anytime someone went above and beyond at work the animal came to his or her cube until the next success was achieved. It was amazing how people would strive to outperform each other just to “win” the animal for a few days. We made sure to call out key contributors often during the initial build of our online inventory system.
    • Provide opportunities for job rotation. Stave off boredom and job dissatisfaction by providing opportunities for employees to try new tasks. Often people become the defacto expert at something simply because they’ve done it so often. Chances are you can easily think of a task that one person does more often than anyone else in your employ. The question you need to ask yourself is, are they the go-to person for this task because they enjoy it, or are they just the one who has been doing it the longest? Even an engaging, enjoyable activity can become monotonous and irritating if it is repeated too often. Encourage employees to share knowledge and take turns with tasks. Sometimes we had folks test, other times they developed, and then they even got into brainstorming.  A little job rotation was important to reduce the burden of just showing up and doing the same thing everyday during the initial build of our online inventory system.
    • Set goals. Everyone likes to feel as if they are working towards something. If employees are just “showing up” it will show in their attitude and their work. If they have specific goals that they are working to accomplish that can be a real morale and productivity booster.
    • Listen Up! Listen to your employees. Ask their advice, get their opinions and most importantly survey them to find out how satisfied they are with their jobs. If there’s a problem, you need to know about before they’re giving their notice.

Keeping your employees happy can provide numerous benefits for your small business. You can’t afford to let talent leave. In this competitive marketplace small business owners need every advantage they can get. Check back with us soon for more tips to help you grow your small business.

Based on our own observations the happiest employees are the ones that use Stockpile, the world's best online inventory system. Don’t believe us? Try it for yourself and see! Stockpile will save you time and money and improve employee morale.

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