There is a lot to be said for the customer experience.
A happy customer will become an advocate, which means they will recommend your company and its products or services to their friends and family. It also costs a lot less to retain a customer than to go out and find another one.
The same could be said for your employees. It costs a lot to recruit and train new staff, the undercover recruiter website has broken down the cost. If you use a recruitment agency you could be spending 20-30% of the annual salary. If not, and you use social media and one job site it could be £200-£400 per applicant.
And then you have training, the average company spends over £1000 training each new recruit.
So why do people leave a company?
There is a phrase ‘people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers’, this has been around for years, but it is a little more complicated than that. The Harvard Business Review has a different take on this issue;
The decision to exit was because of the work. They left when their job wasn’t enjoyable, their strengths weren’t being used, and they weren’t growing in their careers.
So that leads us to growth, growing your people so they have a passion for their job and for your company.
Start from the very beginning, the onboarding process. Make sure your new recruits have everything they need and that everything is in order for their first day. That’s including equipment, user id’s, payroll, and background checking if you need it. You could even have a networking event where they meet other recruits before they start or have a ‘getting to know you’ virtual classroom session.
When your recruit starts, make sure they have a good, well-rounded induction programme. Just because you have 1 recruit, doesn’t mean their experience should be any different than if they had started with 10 other people.
Don’t just give them the manual or information of how to do the job, use blended learning techniques to make their experience rich. This can be using classroom training combined with eLearning and video learning. Make their induction something they go home and tell their family and friends about, make them excited to come to work the next day.
So you have got them in, they are doing the job, how do you keep them inspired?
Your managers will be able to pick up in their 121’s if the person needs any development for their role, but also they can find out if there is anything else they are interested in. Do they want to be a manager? A developer? Handle customer complaints? Are they happy where they are?
By developing continuous learning programmes in your company, you will allow people to test the waters, to find out if they really do want to develop in that area or if they find their passion moving them somewhere else.
Give your people the power to follow their passion, to choose their own destiny and they will stay with you. Even better, they will become brand advocates.