How to Get a Handle on Employment Churn
If you’ve ever lost a key employee, you know the immediate and long-term hit to your bottom line.
Luckily, there are steps you can take to reduce employee turnover and the challenges it brings. Here are a few to consider:
- Review employee compensation. Do your homework to ensure your company is offering competitive industry salaries and benefits for your area. Consider making pay adjustments to key employees that would be hard to replace. Also, review benefit packages. Many of your competitors may be offering additional vacation, enhanced family leave and other benefits. A good way to look at this additional expense is to balance the additional cost against the cost of replacing one or two key employees.
- Talk with employees about what keeps them satisfied. Various workplace studies found that the priorities of employees across working generations align on major job-related issues, including fair treatment, growth opportunities, flexible work hours and positive impact of their work. During performance reviews, ask your employees about their priorities. This will give you insight into what retention strategies are working well at your company, or tip you off on why employees may end up leaving. Anonymous surveys may also be an effective way to gauge the satisfaction of your employees.
- Offer career paths to employees who want them. Chances are if employees feel stuck in their job roles they’ll go looking for opportunity elsewhere. Show the ambitious employees at your company that their desires for career development are heard by offering them more responsibility and trust in their roles. This could come in the form of additional assignments outside of their usual scope, plus more autonomy.
- Cross-train employees in key functions. This not only offers employees new challenges and a chance to develop more skills, it also provides you with the comfort of knowing that key positions can be temporarily backfilled should someone leave unexpectedly.
And if you need to hire new employees…
You may be able to increase your candidate pool (and tax breaks!) by considering individuals who are a part of Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) target groups. This federal tax credit is available to employers who hire and retain veterans and individuals the government identifies as having major barriers to employment, including those receiving:
- Long-term unemployment
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
- Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
- Long-term family assistance
- Food stamps
Other WOTC target groups include designated community residents living in empowerment zones or rural renewal counties, vocational rehabilitation referrals and individuals who were incarcerated.
With the WOTC, you may be able to claim up to $2,400 for each employee who works 400 or more hours in their first year.
