The lifeblood of every company is its employees and as the labor market tightens, the chance of a workforce exodus becomes a real threat. The management consulting firm, Bain & Company, said that each year the average company loses 20-50% of its employee base. In step with this annual migration, is the cost of losing just one worker as being 150% of that person’s annual salary, according to Columbia University. We have put together a Team Pledge to keep your workforce more engaged and hopefully less likely to leave.
- Require a work-life balance: Ensure your team is taking the necessary time off for themselves and their families. Attending family events, doctor visits, and vacations will help your workforce refresh and rejuvenate.
- Encourage generosity and gratitude with each other and the community through your own actions, be the example.
- Offer flexibility around work hours and location. Many companies are offering trusted employees the ability to work from home on some projects.
- Make opportunities for development and growth within the company. The socially connected workforce of today expects opportunities to present themselves or they will move on to the next big thing.
- Don’t work short staffed; before long, morale and productivity will suffer. Use temporary workers to round out your workforce to maintain everyone’s work-life balance.
- Avoid Micromanagement of your team, show them that you trust them to do their job.
- Use mentors to train, train, & train some more to keep your workforce confident and able to see their value within the company’s Big Picture.
- Recognize employee contributions and make a big deal out of it. Appreciation of hard work boosts anyone’s self-esteem and boosts company pride.
Keeping your team engaged will go a long way in reaching corporate goals and building a loyal workforce. A great place to start is using a Likert Scale questionnaire to measure job satisfaction, productivity, quality of peers, and the likelihood of changing jobs. Through anonymous compliments or complaints, you are able to measure your current efforts and possibly improve upon them.
