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Motivating and Retaining Your Staff
Motivating and Retaining Your Staff
One of the keys to growing any successful business is retaining quality employees. Your staff are your greatest asset - keeping them motivated and retained in a competitive job market is crucial to the ongoing health and success of your business.
Not only does high staff turnover result in a significant direct cost to your business, but it can also have a negative ongoing effect by fostering an unstable, inconsistent and non-cohesive work culture. When it comes to keeping staff motivated and retained, however, research shows that remuneration is rarely the bottom line.
Staff benefits and incentives
Implementing effective and meaningful staff benefits and incentives can help you to attract high quality staff, boost the productivity and morale of your workforce as well as to motivate and retain your valued employees.
Benefits
Providing meaningful staff benefits and perks to your staff is an important factor in motivating and retaining employees. While remuneration will always be a key motivator, non-financial benefits are becoming increasingly attractive to the modern employee and a valuable means of motivating and retaining staff.
Benefits should complement remuneration and salary rather than be used as a substitute for good pay, and ideally, they should be personalised to individual staff members to ensure that they are genuinely beneficial and meaningful.
Some simple non-financial benefits and perks to consider include:
- Additional leave days e.g. on staff birthdays.
- Complimentary parking, gym membership airline lounge membership, or cinema/sporting tickets.
- Work-life balance benefits such as flexible working hours, working from home, study leave or child care assistance
- Subsidised staff cafeterias
- Staff discounts on company products/services
- Complimentary staff massages or yoga classes
- Yearly offsite team-building experiences
- High quality, personalised Christmas and Birthday gifts
- Magazine subscriptions
Incentives
Offering your staff attractive incentives as a reward for performance and goal accomplishment can be a very effective way of boosting productivity, motivating staff and linking individual and business objectives.
Staff incentives can be financial or non-financial but they should be substantial enough to motivate your staff and reflect the effort and time involved in accomplishing the goal/s. Offering incentives can also be a useful means of retaining staff by providing rewards for long service.
Staff incentives can include:
- Offering top performing staff profit-sharing opportunities or shares in your company.
- Praising and recognising staff for their effort and achievements.
- Expressing genuine thanks for a job well done.
- Offering promotions, salary increases or lump-sum bonuses based on performance.
- Celebrating individual, team and company successes.
- Offering non-financial bonuses such as weekends away, event tickets or spa treatments to reward effort.
- Offering long-service incentives such as additional annual leave after 5 years.
What to do:
- Get to know your staff
Understanding what’s important to each of your staff members will enable you to offer them more meaningful and personalised benefits.
- Involve your staff
Consult your staff about benefits and incentives - give them options and allow them to choose from a range of benefits or incentive options. E.g. lump sum bonus or company shares.
- Set achievable goals
Don’t dangle a carrot beyond reach. Setting high but achievable goals is an important part of implementing an effective staff incentives program.
- Reward effort
Reward the effort of staff working on longer-term or ongoing projects.
- Consult a human resources professional
Employ the services of a human resources expert to assess or develop your staff benefits and incentives program.
- Talk to your accountant
It’s important to be aware that there may be tax implications for the benefits that you offer to your staff so make sure you consult an accountant before you implement any staff benefits schemes.
Staff development
Many employees identify opportunities for professional development in the workplace as a key contributor to their satisfaction levels at work.
By offering a structured staff development program and ongoing opportunities for personal and professional growth, you will not only ensure the increased skill-levels, capabilities and expertise of your staff but you will also promote high staff retention and ultimately the success and growth of your business over the long term.
Some of the ways that you can motivate and retain staff through development opportunities include:
- One-on-one mentoring such as weekly mentoring sessions with more senior staff members.
- Structured performance management.
- Secondment opportunities for special assignments.
- Opportunities for increased responsibility and more challenging roles based on performance.
- New or additional work tasks based on employees’ interests.
- Formal training and skills development.
- Community volunteering opportunities.
- Subsidising further study.
- Regular reviews of staff development aims.
What to do:
- Develop a structured development plan for each staff member
Involve staff in identifying the development opportunities that they’re most interested in, agree on key professional development goals and a structured program to achieve them. Put it in writing and review it regularly.
- Consult Staff Training and Development professionals
Get staff training and professional development experts on board to advise you on the most effective staff development programs for you and your team.
Communication and Appraisals
Successful communication and consultation between you and your staff is critical to your business’ success.
Communication
Communication in any successful business should be a two-way process. It’s important to clearly communicate your business objectives and your employees’ role in achieving them. If your staff have a clear understanding of how their individual contribution fits into the big picture of your business, their work efforts will be more focused and effective.
You should also encourage your staff to express their own views and suggestions and provide feedback on processes and management. Not only do employees experience a greater degree of job satisfaction and morale when they feel that their employers listen to and value their opinion but, your staff can also be a valuable source of ideas for improvement and growth.
Encouraging open communication not just between you and your staff but between staff members fosters a more functional, well-informed and high performing work-force as well as an honest, inclusive and respectful work culture.
Appraisals
Setting clear, measurable performance objectives for your staff and reviewing them at regular intervals is a crucial factor in promoting and retaining high-quality staff.
Performance objectives provide staff with focus and motivation as well as a sense of accomplishment and morale when objectives are met or exceeded. They also enable you to measure the performance of your staff and identify any particular strengths that can be leveraged or weaknesses that need to be addressed.
An effective performance and appraisal system includes:
- Setting clear objectives for each staff member. E.g. sales or acquisition targets
- Ongoing Performance management
- Providing necessary resources. e.g. tools and training
- Scheduling regular appraisals (every 6 or 12 months)
- Rewarding staff who meet or exceed their performance objectives.
- Addressing weaknesses or under-performance with training or other means.
- Setting new objectives to keep staff challenged and motivated.
What to do:
- Schedule regular staff meetings
Establish open communication by scheduling regular staff meetings and inviting input and feedback on particular aspects of your business.
- Be approachable
Always make time for your staffs’ questions and comments. Ask them how they’re doing and let them know that you value their opinion.
- Consult staff members
Identify and set performance objectives in consultation with staff members. Give them a sense of ownership and control of the process.
- Engage a human resources professional
Seek the expertise of an HR expert to help you develop and implement the most appropriate and effective communications and appraisals processes for your business.
business.gov.au Government information portal for business including useful information on employment and training. www.workplacevisions.com Blog providing small and medium businesses with commentary about workplace management issues, human resources, recruitment, training and change management. Entrepreneur.com Information to help start, grow or manage a small business including advice and resources on human resources and staff management. |
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