Retention, incentives and ‘getting it right’
Inflation rates and the rapidly increasing cost of living are hitting news headlines regularly. You would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t done a double-take at the fuel pump or checked for errors on their heating bills.
Several organisations have responded by offering monetary compensation for staff. We’ve learnt that Rolls Royce are providing a £2,000 living-cost bonus to 14,000 of their staff; Lloyds Bank have offered a £1,000 lump sum to help with rising costs; and Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda have all announced plans to offer pay rises for their store-based staff this year. In the short term, this is enormously helpful and will undoubtedly help to reduce some financial worries as well as incentivise staff to remain loyal to their employers. In the longer-term, however, we are curious about whether this is sustainable.
We can’t control rising inflation, so perhaps financial support and one-off payments will continue to be required in the short to medium-term. But we ask, how else can organisations attempt to retain their people when the job market is so buoyant?
People are the very lifeblood of any organisation and, when values align with a high-performance culture, we see organisations take-off! When companies ‘get it right’, their people rarely consider that the grass might be greener elsewhere. So what are those organisations doing ‘right’?
- Trust: a key concept for employees and employers. An employee wants to feel respected to do their job well and an employer must provide a safe environment in which to do it, welcoming innovation, ideas and the opportunity to fail, learn and grow. Trust is your baseline from which all performance grows
- Development: this comes in many different flavours. Conferences, virtual learning, workshops, on-the-job training, one-to-one coaching, mentoring, offsites, and more. Organisations who ‘get it right’ usually have a good slice of budget set aside for crucial (and expected) development activities. This is an investment, not a cost
- Flexibility: this is a high priority for many people. As trust has risen, so too has the option to work flexibly. One of our clients told us that their motto is ‘work where you need to be’ and ‘where you need to be for your stakeholders’. Good people know what needs to be done to achieve team goals. Hire well and get out of their way, flexible and remote working are here to stay
- Benefits: increasingly we’re seeing ownership of financial and non-financial benefits being handed over to individuals. Flexible staff benefit platforms that include a personal budget to spend on physical and mental health, alongside pensions, insurance, leave and holiday allocation allow individuals to engage with their remuneration. Rewards and recognition perks such as vendor and subscription discounts, Birthday honours and lifestyle offers serve to further support employee retention goals. Benefits that are well thought through and implemented with care deliver a competition game-changer
Staff retention is hot right now, are you ready? What are you doing to keep turnover low and the stoke high? Get in touch to let us know.
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