6 proactive ways to retain your best employees

By Melanie Vandenboogaard

Talented, productive employees are essential to your company’s success. In addition to accomplishing goals and advancing business strategies, they also contribute to a healthy company culture. Keeping these stellar employees on board can positively impact morale while minimizing recruitment costs, onboarding time, lost productivity, errors and loss of institutional knowledge. Here are six retainment ideas plus promotional items that can help in your efforts.

1. Pay well; offer good benefits

According to research by Peninsula Canada, the main reason employees switch jobs is to boost their pay. You can assure top employees they are valued by competitively updating salaries on a regular basis.

Offering a competitive suite of perks can also help keep employees happy. Peninsula Canada notes that some of the top perks jobseekers have their eye on include:

• Work-life balance

• Competitive pay and extended health care benefits packages

• Ability to work remotely

• Growth opportunities

• Healthy work environment

Earn employees’ trust

Fostering personal connections with employees helps build trust. Express interest in employees’ personal lives with simple conversations that show you care. To build trust, it’s also important to:

• Be honest and transparent

• Not show favouritism

• Give credit and take blame when appropriate

• Demonstrate competency

Promote well-being

Encourage employees to have a positive work/life balance by promoting flexibility, including work-from-home options, if possible. Allow employees to set their own schedules so they have time for personal responsibilities and interests outside of work.

Breaks are also important. In fact, 94% of employees feel happier when they can take a lunch break. Encourage employees to get away from their desks by handing out branded bento boxes or lunch coolers.

Every employee needs a chance to refresh and recharge with vacation time. Make their time away more comfortable with a branded tech bag or blanket. They’ll remember how supportive you are about taking time off when they see your company logo on their travel gear.

Offer positive reinforcement

Has an employee completed a professional certification or reached a milestone anniversary? Celebrate achievements with a gift, like Bluetooth^® headphones or a picnic set. Depending on the employee’s preference, show your appreciation publicly, such as during a work meeting or on social media, or privately with a thoughtful handwritten note.

Ask questions

Regularly checking on employees can help prevent small issues from escalating. Do they have the resources they need for their job? Is there anything management could do differently? Are they happy with their current responsibilities? In which areas would they like to grow? In addition to asking questions, follow up to show that their input matters.

Encourage creativity

Give employees the freedom to manage their own schedules and create processes that work for them, instead of following rigid guidelines. By focusing feedback on results instead of how they got there, employees will feel they are trusted to work in a way that best suits their skills and preferences.

Build a lasting team of top employees

Proactively taking measures to retain key employees can help build a longer-lasting team. Your workplace culture and company performance will benefit from keeping top employees on the team.

Melanie Vandenboogaard

Melanie VandenBoogaard is a senior merchandising category manager with nearly two decades of experience in the merchandising industry. She specializes in bags—including backpacks, totes, and more—staying on top of trends to ensure 4imprint offers a wide selection that meets customers’ needs in both style and price. Melanie also leads product development for 4imprint’s private-label brands, where she enjoys creating, building, and designing new products.

All marks are the property of 4imprint or their respective owners.

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