How investing in employee retention could save your business
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The heart of any organisation is its people. Yet everywhere we look, big tech companies are laying employees off in swathes; Amazon confirmed that 18,000 people would be getting the boot, while Salesforce, Microsoft and Google collectively let go of tens of thousands of workers.
On paper, restructuring might work for a business in trouble, but what most employers overlook are the aftershocks of redundancies and the effect it can have on employee morale. And with the economy as turbulent as it is right now, maintaining a loyal workforce could be a lifeline.
Employee morale plays a huge part in retention. It makes sense that happy employees are more likely to stick around, so leaders would be wise to invest in this as a starting point.
Why is retention so important?
Have you ever been in the office and realised that you were doing the work of two people? That’s probably because you were. When unfilled jobs remain vacant, the burden usually falls on some other unfortunate soul to pick up the slack. Employees who do the jobs of two people naturally get burnt out much quicker, or get fed up that their salary doesn’t match the reality of working two concurrent jobs, so they end up looking elsewhere.
Now consider the time, stress and cost of hiring new staff. Not only does recruitment eat away at productivity time, but the added expense of advertising, interviewing, onboarding and training can drain your accounts without you even realising.
On top of that, adjusting to a new role usually takes between three and six months, and research has shown that a new hire will, on average, take around two years to reach the productivity level of an existing employee. When a person is laid off, they walk out the door with years of experience, knowledge and creativity that could be an asset to your competitor.
