13 Effective Employee Retention Strategies – Forbes Advisor
Few managers and small business owners have the extra time to invest in cultivating positive work relationships with their employees. Yet few business investments will generate such a handsome return. Following even a handful of these 13 employee retention strategies will translate directly into a more fulfilled and motivated workforce, and rosier financial statements for your business.
Emphasize Cultural Fit When Recruiting
AI is now a component of most recruiting software for quickly sifting through mountains of resumes to surface the top-qualified candidates. What AI can’t accomplish (yet) is identifying the job applicants that are the best match for your company’s unique culture. A good cultural fit is a candidate whose values, personality and attitude align closely with your business’s core principles.
Among the tools used to measure applicants’ cultural fit are personality tests, game-based assessments, situational judgment tests and work sample tests geared to identify soft skills, such as effective communication and harmonious collaboration. Another approach is to conduct structured behavioral interviews that pose standardized questions relating to the applicant’s actual past behavior.
Accentuate the Positive Through Transparent Communication
When was the last time you heard from the top person at your company? Was the person’s message mostly negative or mostly positive? More importantly, did the person’s message refer to and resonate with the company’s core values? (Do you even know what those core values are?)
Creating a positive work environment doesn’t just start at the top; it lives there and needs to be cultivated continuously through every minor and major event and activity. This doesn’t mean sugarcoating the occasional and inevitable bad news that happens at every organization. Positivity is grounded in honesty, openness and innate optimism and trust in the paths you’ve set for your company’s success, even when those paths hit a bumpy patch.
Teach Your Managers Actual, Practical Management Skills
As noted above, beefs with higher-ups are among the primary reasons employees decide to take their talents elsewhere. Bolstering managers’ communication skills, teaching them to trust workers enough to give them more autonomy and training them to recognize their own biases and microaggressions help prevent a toxic work environment.
One of the most useful soft skills for managers is the ability to break down complex problems into simpler, more manageable components. The rule of thumb is to spend 70% of your problem-solving time on understanding the problem and creating a framework for analysis, and 30% on devising potential solutions.
Start New Workers Off on the Right Foot
All the cliches about first impressions and getting off on the right foot have more than a kernel of truth about them. Companies now place a greater emphasis on extended onboarding and training processes for new hires with the dual goals of efficient compliance and personalized short-term and long-term goal setting. A well-crafted onboarding program improves productivity while enhancing job satisfaction and employee retention rates.
Employee management software like BambooHR lets you assign users training courses for onboarding, certifications and more with due dates.
Ask Workers How They’re Feeling, and Listen Carefully to Their Response
Active listening doesn’t mean interrupting every other word or pacing the floor as the person talks. The practice requires giving the speaker your undivided attention, reflecting thoughtfully on what they’re saying and responding honestly and constructively.
Active listening entails reading the person’s body language, asking for clarification when necessary and keeping an open mind rather than responding reflexively and defensively on the spot. It’s most important to let the person know that you hear and understand what they’re saying. Validate their feelings and give their thoughts and opinions the consideration and respect they deserve.
Ideally, managers have one-on-one conversations with their employees, but to gauge employee sentiment at scale, some businesses might want to consider using software, such as Workday’s Peakon Employee Voice tool, in place of or in addition to discussions with employees.
Build Camaraderie and Cohesion in Work Teams
Veteran employees may cringe when they hear the phrase “team building,” but exercises designed to promote camaraderie in work teams can be effective ways to boost morale.
The key to their effectiveness is to match the activity to the group. For example, a group with a mix of new and longtime employees can benefit from icebreakers, such as putting a dozen or so coins in a jar and having each person choose one and relate an event from their life that took place the year the coin was minted. A way to boost team creativity is to break the team into small groups and give each group simple materials, such as uncooked spaghetti noodles, marshmallows, a length of string and Scotch tape, and then challenge them to create the tallest freestanding structure they can.
An idea for building camaraderie among remote team members is a virtual scavenger hunt that asks each member to find a short list of items that are typically found in the home, such as a serving spoon or bandage. Whoever displays all the items first is the winner.
Show Employees How Much You Appreciate Them
It’s one thing to give workers a “Nice job!” shoutout when they go above and beyond, but it’s quite another to demonstrate how thankful you are, whether by implementing a formal recognition program or simply throwing a mini impromptu celebration marking the occasion.
Among the more creative approaches to demonstrating appreciation for employees are department-specific awards posted prominently on an employee Wall of Fame, an upgrade for the employee break room (cappuccino break, anyone?) and wellness perks such as chair massages, yoga breaks and line dance classes.
Make Goal Setting and Tracking an Everyday Event
Goal setting is easy. Goal achieving, not so much. That’s why the S.M.A.R.T. approach to setting goals emphasizes specificity, measurability and achievability along with your goals being relevant and time bound. Any collaboration between workers and managers about goals has to include a tracking element that graphs their progress toward achieving milestones on a set schedule.
Goal tracking tools include positive habit reinforcement, reminders, journaling and gamification features designed to keep workers progressing steadily toward their ultimate aim.
Dashboards in leading project management software, such as Monday.com, can help you track progress toward your goals.
Give Employees Opportunities for Personal and Professional Growth
Companies invest time and resources to develop strategies, but strategies are worthless without execution, and execution requires trained, knowledgeable and motivated people. By investing in your employees, you benefit in two important ways that have a direct impact on your company’s performance: greater skills and higher retention.
Effective approaches to employee growth include personalized learning paths, mentorship programs, cross-department projects and external learning and certificate programs. However, simple opportunities for personal and career development can be just as effective, such as microlearning that delivers targeted instruction on narrow topics and peer coaching that allows co-workers to share skills in small circles.
Bring a Sense of Purpose to Boring, Monotonous Tasks
There’s some tedium in every job. After all, even Indiana Jones had to keep office hours. But when a person’s workday drags on interminably, the monotony can destroy any sense of engagement or motivation, inexorably leading to burnout. Among the techniques for countering monotony are to focus on learning opportunities, such as sharpening spreadsheet skills, and getting a better understanding of how each small task fits into the big picture.
Other ways to overcome monotony on the job are to switch more often between tasks, set very short-term challenges and goals, make small changes to your work environment and take a quick walk around the block. People can be motivated to churn through boring work tasks by rewarding themselves with a short fun break that takes them out of their work environment for a few minutes.
Grant Employees More Flexibility in Their Work Schedules
In work situations, flexibility equals autonomy. While many jobs in healthcare and other fields require a relatively strict schedule, most others can be performed at least in part outside of standard business hours. In particular, employees gain a sense of control over their work lives when they have some input when scheduling decisions are made.
Among the scheduling options employers can offer their workers are work-from-home days, flexible start and stop times, four-day workweeks and job sharing arrangements that convert one full-time position into two part-time jobs. The long-term success of flexible work schedules depends on managers buying into the strategies. The arrangements can also affect the work of employees who choose to stick with a standard 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday schedule.
Invest in Your Workers’ Present and Future
Keeping workers happy and engaged requires more than salary, benefits and a company picnic each summer. Employees who feel valued by their employer are more likely to feel a personal connection to their work and more loyalty to the company. In addition to offering competitive compensation, employers can enhance the esteem workers invest in their work by offering perks that match their employees’ interests.
For example, benefits packages for young workers and those starting or planning to start a family should differ from the benefits you provide to employees who are at mid-career or approaching retirement. Supporting workers through the various stages of their lives will engender loyalty and make them more likely to stay.
Anticipate Burnout and Stress, and Act Quickly to Counter Them
A 2025 work-life survey by UK software vendor ResourceGuru found that 84% of office workers put in overtime each week, and 68% report working weekends, yet only 36% of the desk jockeys were paid overtime. It’s no wonder that 54% felt job-related stress and 28% experienced burnout.
No job is worth your health. The survey identified three main causes of job-related stress and burnout: overworking has become more accepted, poor resource management leads to excessive workloads, and unrealistic deadlines. To reduce the level of stress and burnout in workers, employers can establish well-being policies, train managers to recognize signs of stress and burnout, reward employees who prioritize their health and promote transparency so workers can share how they feel without fearing negative consequences.
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