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When Did You Last Ask Why Your Best Employees Stay?

When Did You Last Ask Why Your Best Employees Stay?
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by
Managing Director

Businesses understandably spend a lot of time thinking about why people leave. Exit interviews are held, salaries are reviewed and managers try to understand whether anything could have been done differently.

I think there’s another question that’s every bit as useful, but one we don’t ask nearly as often: why do your best people stay?

Most businesses have employees they’d really rather not lose. They’re reliable, know the organisation inside out and quietly get on with doing a very good job. Some may have been with you for years. Understanding what keeps those people in your business can tell you an enormous amount about what you’re getting right, and it can also help when you’re trying to recruit more people like them.

The answer isn’t necessarily money. Salary obviously matters and nobody wants to feel they’re being underpaid, but people stay with employers for all sorts of reasons. They may value the flexibility they’re given, enjoy the people they work with, trust their manager or simply appreciate being treated fairly. Others stay because they’re still learning, have been given opportunities to progress or feel that the work they do genuinely matters.

Those things are important for retention, but they’re also part of your recruitment proposition. If employees stay because you have an excellent working environment, tell candidates about it. If you’ve got people who’ve progressed through the company over many years, that’s worth talking about at interview. If you’re genuinely flexible when employees have family commitments, don’t leave that hidden behind a generic paragraph about a “competitive salary and benefits”.

There’s also value in simply asking people. You don’t need a survey or an expensive employee engagement programme. A straightforward conversation with some of your longest-serving and best-performing employees can be surprisingly revealing. You may discover things they value that you’ve never really considered significant.

Of course, you may also hear things that could be better, and that’s useful too. Retaining good people and recruiting good people aren’t separate challenges. They’re two sides of exactly the same issue: creating a business where talented people want to work.

Final Thought

We spend a lot of time asking why employees leave. Perhaps we should spend a little more time understanding why the good ones choose to stay.




Photo by Ofspace LLC on Unsplash

 
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