COVID-19 has undoubtedly had an unprecedented impact on the world. People from all over the world are realising what’s important to them and this has influenced the workplace market. Workers were finally able to see how crucial they were to the overall business success whilst they were having to live off furlough and their place of employment was struggling to survive. ‘The Great Resignation’ is in full swing and employers can’t handle it. Read on to find out why retaining employees during the great resignation is going to be crucial for your overall business success.
What Is The Great Resignation?
The great resignation is exactly what it sounds like, employees are finally noting down their worth and asking employers to treat them the way they deserve to be treated. A study revealed that the top reasons people decided to leave their jobs for were low pay, a lack of growth opportunities and feeling disrespected. The same study found that everyone who was in a new job since leaving their old job has found that they are better paid, in a more advanced role and feel appreciated – a stark contrast. Childcare issues and a lack of benefits were next in line as the main reasons why employees decided to hand in their resignation.
How are this affecting businesses?
At the moment, businesses are facing struggles that they have never had before by trying to retain hardworking, motivated staff. With so many people leaving, businesses are scared that they will lose some of their prized-asset staff. A study conducted by the British Chamber of Commerce found that an almighty 70% of businesses were finding it difficult trying to find staff, with construction, hotel and catering industries at the forefront of this. All industry sectors should be looking at retaining their staff, but how can they do this?
Offer benefits
One of the key methods that all employers can do to try and retain staff is to offer benefits. Benefits is a very loose term, and it is up to you as a business to analyse what sort of perks you think your employees would benefit from. Some benefits could include things such as providing a monthly bonus incentive to the top 5 performing employees or enabling workers to go through the process of hybrid working. Some employers are put off from offering benefits as they tell themselves that they are too busy to be doing this. However, there are plenty of easy to use employee perk platforms to choose from that can essentially offer your employees these benefits without you having to do much.
Support employee wellbeing
If you want to retain staff, you must ensure that you are showing them that you truly care. You can do this by taking an interest in their well-being, whether this is mentally, physically or financially. If you want to support your employee’s mental well-being, the business could always offer mental health services such as free therapy or life coach sessions. Physical wellbeing is just as important and as an employer, you should want your employee to feel physically healthy. Fit and healthy employees are more likely to be alert and make better/quicker decisions in the workplace. As a business, you could offer perks such as gym memberships or cycle-to-work schemes which aim to promote a much healthier lifestyle. Financial wellbeing is crucial to retaining employees, if you offer them special discount rates that they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else, it could be a huge factor if they make the decision to ever leave the business.
The future
It’s easy to see that companies are in a major predicament with most of the power now transferring over to the employee’s hands. Businesses will have to look at doing everything they can, such as offering benefits and perks to ensure that they are retaining staff during the great resignation.
