Looking for Retention Tools
VanEngen
21 Posts
We're having some difficulty with retention (who isn't) and have decided to put a QI group together to see what we can do to make things a bit better.
Do any of you have suggestions for me? Books, articles, etc.
I'd appreciate anything that you could throw my way.
Thanks! Tammy Jo xpray
Do any of you have suggestions for me? Books, articles, etc.
I'd appreciate anything that you could throw my way.
Thanks! Tammy Jo xpray
Comments
(1) Employee friendly policies, (2) Something really special and attractive in your benefits package, (3) Company picnics and hamburger days, (4) Well written and fair policies, distributed annually, (5) Take the doors of all the supervisor's offices, (6) Require each supervisor to spend at least 2 hours per day walking around talking to people, learning something about their people, spending warm and fuzzy time out in the real environment where the human heartaches are, (7) Clean up the employee break room and keep it sparkling, (8) take down all the cameras except those required for REAL security issues, (9) nail up some suggestion boxes, (10) Insist on a pay scale that's 32% higher than the local average for each occupation. And, lest I forget, (11) Fire any manager who refers to any employee or group of employees as 'those people'.
re# 11 Or those who refer to staff as MY staff/employees/people
Edit: Sorry this was supposed to fall in under Don's and refers to his excellent listing.
When we finally concluded that retention was dependent on the two factors noted above, our turnover was over 120% (that was three years ago). Last year our annual turnover was 59%, and March YTD 2003 it is tracking at a 42% annualized figure. That is awesome when you know we are part of an industry that routinely accepts 100+% employee turnover.
It may be interesting to note that we have not spent one cent on any kind of picnic, gift or similar so called retention tool over the past three years (we had spent the crown jewels in the past). It is all about the people selected to do the work and how they are compensated (and to some degree how they are treated as employees).
A very important footnote to our experience is that for each of the past three years our earnings have improved by double digits each year. Last year, the third year of our program, our earnings improvement was our best yet at over 20%.
We have concluded (and we think correctly so) that retention begins with the selection of the right people to do the job.
Value Florida
Does anyone have any employee surveys that they would like to share?
Tammy Jo