Why money can’t buy employee satisfaction

In the highly competitive new world of work, employers must bridge the leadership gap to retain the volume and quality of talent required to be competitive.

In part two of this series (read the first part here), we look at how to retain your top talent through good hiring and recruitment practices.

Improve employee satisfaction and retention
Employees come to work each day expecting and wanting to be productive. They look for helpful policies and processes, they want to work with managers who enable them to do their best, and they need to be recognised appropriately for their contributions – in ways that go beyond just pay.

Organisations that are successful in retaining talent have leaders who are passionate about the importance of their people, connect them to their organisational strategies, ensure practices are consistent and inspire outstanding performance, therefore delivering the most compelling employment experience.

Improving employee satisfaction and retention is not necessarily an expensive exercise. Many factors leading to employee satisfaction can’t be bought – career growth, meaningful work, respect, appreciation, feedback and being able to influence how work gets done are far more powerful than gifts and prizes offered in recognition and reward programs. Initiatives that are difficult or expensive to deliver become short-term fads and fail to provide the long-lasting benefits employees really want.

Every organisation is unique and has its own set of challenges. However, from many lessons learned, the core attributes that play an important role in retaining talent include:

    * Ethics and integrity – everyone at every level should know honesty and integrity are non-negotiable within an organisation.
    * Career advancement prospects – employees need to know they can start at entry level and move upwards, with the right career planning and talent mapping tools in place.
    * Caring – encourage a culture of team work.
    * Challenge – ensure your people are constantly challenged. Encourage innovative thinking – challenge your people to look at how you do things and how things can be done better.
    * Excellence – hire the right people who are committed to excellence as it’s the starting point of any good retention strategy. Skills can be developed but personality traits are very difficult to change. Reward and recognise high performers. This can be as simple as public recognition by saying ‘thank you’ – and it can go a long way.
    * Leadership – commit to identifying and developing the best leaders, these people will contribute to the ongoing and future success of your organisation.
    * Learning environment – provide lots of opportunities to learn new things and similarly allow your business to learn by asking for feedback through employee and customer surveys. And don’t forget exit interviews. Get to know why your people leave and use this data to build effective retention strategies.
    * Customer and results focus – focus on the outside as much as the inside. Collaborate in teams to encourage natural innovation, and for senior leaders in any business, always remember what it’s like to walk in your people’s shoes.