How Can We Attract New Employees and Keep Them for Life?

    

How Can We Attract New Employees and Keep Them for Life?

How many of your employees have left your organization within the past year? The past five years? While you may not be  losing all of your employees, losing even one can have a  significant impact on your business. Losing an employee is expensive. You are not only losing a valued member of your company, but you are also losing years of experience and knowledge, the money you have poured into that position, and the time you spent training up that employee for his or her role.  The amount of time and money that will need to be spent to find a replacement can seem daunting – even impossible in some situations.

So what is a company supposed to do? While losing employees will always be inevitable, finding out why your employees are leaving is a good step in preventing any more unnecessary losses. New opportunities, job frustration, salary disparities, and changing life situations are all reasons employees have cited for leaving their current positions. As an HR manager, it is your job to not only find out why employees are leaving your company, but it is also your job to prevent it as much as possible.

While you cannot stop new opportunities from knocking at the doorstep of your employees, you can provide your employees with the satisfaction they need in their current situation. Many employees job shop because they are unhappy in their current position or they feel inadequately compensated (or prepared) for their roles. By investing in your employees now, you can prevent them from leaving in the future.

The Necessity for Employee Development

Keeping your employees should not be hard; it just requires a little more management on your part. Research has shown time and again that a little employee development can go a long way. By providing them with more education and training opportunities, you are showing your employees that you value their role within your company and support their personal goals for job growth and satisfaction.

As an HR manager, you already know and understand the need for employee development; however, finding the time to actually commit to it is another matter. Most business cultures are focused on the here and now – tasks that need to be accomplished now in order to maintain the company’s current success. If you want to keep your employees around for the long-haul though, you need to start preparing them for the future.

This requires looking outside their current realm of influence and preparing them for natural job progression. Pair them with training opportunities to grow their skill sets. Invest in their education. Provide mentorship relationships within the company to allow them to “try on” new roles and better prepare them for the future. These opportunities will add value where salary cannot.

The Importance of Keeping Track of Employee Development Data

Keeping track of employee training and education is just as important as the education itself. However, due to the endless demands of their job, many HR managers do not have the time or attention to dedicate to the tracking of employee development data. That’s why human resource information systems (HRIS) are so critical.

Every time an employee completes training or enrolls in an education opportunity, you need to have thorough documentation. With an HRIS, you can track all of this data and even create a course of action for future training and education. By having access to this type of information, managers can make better hiring decisions internally and better prepare employees for current (and future) job roles.

Don’t let your employees’ training and education go undocumented – contact us today to learn how you can keep track of all this important information so you do not lose employees to another company willing to invest in them.

Nancy Pearce

About The Author

Nancy Pearce

Senior Business Consultant, HRIS Practice Leader - Nancy is our HRIS Practice Leader and has over fourteen years of experience with BAASS. Nancy started as a Senior Business Consultant with Sage 300 ERP (Accpac) with emphasis on the Not-for-Profit sector specializing in Payroll & HR Management Systems. She became certified in Sage HRMS in 2006 and eventually moved her focus to strictly Human Capital Management consulting and development of the HRIS Practice at BAASS.