Employee retention is one of our biggest business challenges. It’s expensive, it’s disruptive for the business and it has a big effect on HR departments, which now have to focus on hiring people to fix the problem.
By taking a FAST Approach, we can significantly increase retention by creating engaged, empowered, and successful teams.
When we take a FAST approach, which looks to increase our performance in the areas of Focus, Accountability, Simplicity and Transparency, this can have a tremendous impact on our staff.
To increase Accountability, we need to be much clearer in our definition of roles and responsibilities, communicate our expectations more clearly, and look to ensure our teams have the right skills, authority levels, and tools to do their job successfully.
When we do this, we immediately empower our teams and put them in a position to be successful, which significantly increases their engagement.
When you couple this with a much clearer Focus where everyone has a clear picture of what success looks like and you have communicated a Simple approach, or at least communicated the approach clearly and simply, then you significantly increase the belief of the team that they can be successful.
With an empowered, engaged team that has belief we can achieve anything, and as we start to create a culture based on this we start to meet one of the basic needs of people, which is esteem, as we give them confidence that they can achieve.
When we do this, it can have a significant impact on our staff retention. Everyone wants to work in a successful environment or play for a successful team. From my experience, this has helped keep staff turnover in my teams and departments significantly below that of other areas, usually 50% lower, sometimes even higher.
Additionally, I often get approached by people who want to come and join the department, as they can see that we have created a culture of success, one where they have the opportunity to see the fruits of their hard work.
Too often people find themselves working in an environment where their chances of success are hampered, and they become frustrated; a blame culture develops because of a lack of success, and it has to be someone’s fault, right? And it can’t be the bosses.
In this scenario, most people lose their enthusiasm and engagement and begin to look for alternative positions, positions where they could be successful, which not only disrupts your team but also has a cost impact too.
So when you implement a FAST approach, you can prevent this staff attrition by having an engaged workforce, which not only increases retention but also becomes a magnet for talent from other teams and even other companies.
This will then help you avoid the costs of attrition and the consequent recruitment, which can be significant.
If you want to increase staff retention and reduce recruitment costs, then implement FAST!
If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to view our course.
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