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Employee retention
Discover how you can improve employee retention and avoid costly turnover.
Learn about the challenges Danish managers face and gain insights into strategies to motivate and retain your employees.
A critical management task
Several surveys among Danish managers show that employee retention is among the most important tasks in the boardroom.
This is partly because the recession has been replaced by a boom, and partly because large generations of middle-aged employees are slowly being replaced by smaller generations of young people.
For managers, this means that they may face challenges in finding the necessary workforce due to a mismatch between supply and demand.
In addition, many industries are already short of specialists and losing an employee – especially to competitors – is obviously expensive.
Typically, it costs 150-200% of an employee’s salary to replace them with someone else.
So there’s good reason to focus on employee retention – also because it boosts employee motivation.
Employee retention: Create an attractive exchange ratio
To retain and motivate employees, many companies traditionally offer higher salaries, company cars, bigger bonuses or discounts on hairdressing, lunch and fitness.
But the traditional ways of thinking about employee retention with financial and material benefits can’t stand alone.
Instead, the manager and HR should encourage the employee to develop a strong sense of belonging to the company.
The employee contributes effort, commitment and loyalty, while the company provides salary, development, challenges, social networking and perhaps identity through the job.
Do you have a formal retention strategy?
Ensure that there is some innovation and strategic development
Ensures collaboration and communication works
Demonstrates drive and delivers results quickly
Ensure tasks are organized and structured, take responsibility and implement solutions
How do you work with motivation and well-being in your organization?
To succeed, the attractive exchange relationship requires the manager to act rather than react.
Most often, the manager will react by first asking the employee what would make him stay after he quits.
But by then it will typically be too late.
Even if the employee accepts an offer to stay, there is a 50% chance that they will leave within a year
Instead, the manager must act proactively and from the job interview to the onboarding process and retention interviews, make sure to create an attractive exchange relationship with the employee.
One way to do this is through performance reviews and ongoing performance appraisals.
The right way to structure the trade-off depends entirely on the company and the individual employee.
So the only way managers can find out what makes employees tick is by asking them.
We call these conversations retention conversations, motivation conversations or employee conversations.
E-book: Employee retention
The retention e-book gives you the tools to:
- Put together an employee retention strategy
- Work concretely with employee retention in everyday life
- Create an attractive trade-off that is often the best way to approach retention
- Spot the warning signs to look out for if you suspect an employee is leaving
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How does Garuda help retain and motivate your employees?
According to both Danish and American research, these conversations help retain employees.
So of course, it’s these conversations that we help facilitate.
And it often starts with persona profiles.
Because once you know the personality profiles of your employees or colleagues – and they know each other – it becomes much easier for you to have conversations with them.
You’ll find out where their strengths and limitations lie.
What motivates them.
How they communicate.
And how they prefer to work.
All essential knowledge if you’re going to hold conversations that aim to keep employees motivated and want to stay with the company.
In addition, retention or motivation interviews based on personal profiles provide a clear overview of employee values.
And they need to align with the company’s values if employees are to stay with the organization in the long term.
Both personal and interpersonal values set the framework for whether employees feel that their work is worth doing.
So naturally, these values must be able to thrive under the roof of the organization.
Through personal profiles, motivational or performance appraisals and value-based management, Garuda helps you retain your employees
Contact us to learn more about employee retention
Rasmus Hall Mortensen
Managing Director
If you have any questions or would like more information about Garuda, our profile tools or anything else, you are of course always welcome to contact us.
