This is context to the need of a system in place in today’s corporate world to hold back the potential carrying, & talented employees. Although I’m neither a market researcher, nor a person involved in human resources specialization of management, but having worked with an organization in past for two years, I wish to express few ideas that can be put to use in almost all the organizations. The ideas would help an organization to retain its employee’s pool, gain trust and a feeling of belongingness with the company not as a business firm but as an institute that musters growth.
I would begin by a famous quote, “Always love your work, never love your company, for you may never know when company stops loving you!!!”
Here are few methods I have enumerated to highlight about creative retention strategies that can be used by organizations of today:-
· The greatest motivation for an employee to continue working with an organization doesn’t lie in perks given in form of petty gifts time & on, but in form of regular rewards & recognitions, the three R’s (Regularity in recognition, Recognition, and rewarding the recognition). Yes, that’s the key word. An employee would only feel encouraged if he/she is rewarded at business unit/organizational level for the task/project he’s been involved into. This remuneration can come in form of timely certifications symbolic to applause offered depending on the complexity & priority of the task at hand. The varying degree of work would determine the kind of certificate issued, vis-à-vis something catering to organizational level, or BU level or team level. And to compliment these certificates, the best option for any company would be to distribute rewards in form of gift vouchers, movie tickets, club swimming passes etc with them. These petty vouchers would add to the cost to the company, but the level of productivity increase and goals clearance would surpass all costs incurred.
· Next big factor that keeps an employee glued to a company is the desire to grow, not just financially but also holistically, both at work and personal life. The three areas of concern can be looked into by different strategies that need to be devised and implemented timely with full effectiveness:-
- Financially: - This would be the most important growth factor for an employee esp. for the ones who are at the starting levels. An efficient bonus tracking system needs to be taken into consideration, which could be made online to the extent that an employee keeps feeding in his/her work/tasks completed (with code assigned to each task) and manager’s approval (again online) in the system, so that all those feedback can be taken into account while deciding the bonus for an employee at the end of the period. This would give the organization an advantage to introduce transparency in the system, make the whole process of project completion more efficient and productive and encourage greater employee participation. On one hand where coming up with such a system would incur some costs, the benefits reaped out of it for long term would supersede all the costs automatically. This would also allow variable bonuses to be offered to employees for doing different levels of work, rather than judging two employees with different levels of work on the same scale.
- Work growth: - This would include provision of latest trainings required, both offline and online to all the employees of the company at all the levels. External vendors/ trainers need to be called in on regular basis and training sessions conducted. Also, to encourage employees to go and attend trainings externally arranged by the company after incurring heavy costs, a company can offer petty certifications (not much cost constraint for a company) to all the trained employees. But this would mean, an employee needs to pass the necessary tests at the end of the training (to get that significant certificate), and make self available for any work required outside the peripherals of his/her team. This would allow effective utilization of trained resources across teams and hence across spectrum. This may also ask an employee to devote self as an effective collaborator for other teams working in the same organizations on different platforms.
- Personal growth: - This would include making the work friendlier for an employee by giving him/her the right to have flexibility at work. /this may not include a flexibility in time, but yes, a flexibility to report at work when desired by an employee on basis of an authenticate reason. This factor would help an employee of not deducting his/her approved leaves, and would be most effective if immediate senior/superior is well informed beforehand.
· Moving ahead, the next big factor for winning the hearts of employees for an employer is to have regular team-outings in form of lunch, dinners, gaming sessions, birthday celebrations etc. This would generate greater camaraderie among all employees and higher levels of interaction would help in siphoning off all the everlasting hiccups that exists between two colleagues or between a subordinate & his/her boss. Regular conversations would keep the employees abreast of the prevailing market situations and hence provide them an informal platform to discuss all the issues they face on day to day basis. All views are personal...
