What is the most important to employees except the pay? Career Development. And what initiatives does your organization take to make sure that employees are leading to a better career path while working for you? If you say “None”, you better take this one seriously.
You can analyze any of the surveys; ask any of your current employees, the answer to things that matter would be – salary, career development, and workplace culture. So if you are paying them well, and are also maintaining a great workplace culture, all you need is to consider their career growth for employee retention.
Lack of career opportunities is the top reason for any employee to leave the job unless they are getting bullied or something similar. A lot of organizations face the problem in retaining employees. It is really expensive to replace employees who either leave for a better pay or are hired by their competitors. Recruiting new employees that much more effort and money than the salary of the employee who left.
There are certain career development initiatives that you as an employer can take to have a great rate of employee retention. As the demand for better talent is rising, companies are building career advancement strategies as a cost-effective way for retaining employees. Strategies include paying for various classes that employees attend for enhancing their skills, mapping paths to target positions, and also recruiting internal career coaches to groom their resumes. This may seem like preparing candidates so that they can be poached by competitors or other companies, but in fact, such initiatives raise employee morale and makes them more loyal towards your organization.
Promoting the concept of career lattice may also prove to be better for employees who are looking to move to different fields as their progress in their career path. It provides flexibility for progress, as any employee can make movement in either direction, up, sideways, or down, every movement will be considered as progress. Allow personalizing the career progression pace according to employee’s wish and current situation. Also, the company shall focus on results rather than focusing on the number of hours spent working.