Employees are essential to the success of every business, small or large. However, employees are of two different kinds. Some do the bare minimum to collect their paycheck and live.
Contrarily, some employees go above and beyond to ensure they do their jobs well, so clients and employers are delighted. The second type is the high-performing employees you want your company to retain.
It is challenging to retain such employees as companies are always looking for them. The following are strategies you can use to retain your high-performing employees:
Focus on Wellness
As a business owner or manager, productivity is often the main priority when dealing with employees. However, if you want to have high-performing employees and retain them in the long run, it would be better to focus on wellness.
For high-performing employees, it is not a matter of pushing them to do better but instead creating an environment where they can thrive. Therefore, you can ensure the furniture in the workplace is ergonomic, there is natural light, reducing clutter, and ensuring that they participate in wellness programs.
If high-performing employees see the effort you put into ensuring their health and wellbeing, they are all but assured of staying with you.
Offer Constructive Feedback Consistently
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Highly performing employees are always looking to improve. Therefore, if you want to keep them around, you should give them feedback on how they can do so. The key is to provide them with constructive feedback.
One way to do that is to provide positive reinforcement on what they are doing right by offering them rewards and insight on improving their strengths. You will also want them to improve their weaknesses, which you should do in an empowering manner instead of cutting them down.
Consistency of feedback is vital, so set regular work review meetings where you offer the best employees constructive feedback. Monthly or quarterly meetings should be enough.
Student Loan Assistance
Most people struggle with their finances, including high-performance employees, so offering them financial assistance is an excellent retention strategy. One of the most significant financial issues of the 21st century is student loan debt; hence offering employees student loan assistance can be very helpful.
One way to offer employees who are performing well financial assistance is through private student loan refinancing. Student loan refinancing involves restructuring the payment plan for student loans by modifying the interest rate or the payment duration to make it easy for employees to repay the loan.
Student loan refinancing is not only a great way to retain high-performing employees but also a great way to attract them.
Performance-Based Compensation
Most firms have a blanket compensation structure where employees are paid depending on their job description and position on the company ladder. However, high-performing employees will be discouraged if they receive the same pay as their poorly performing counterparts.
Therefore, if you want to retain them, you should develop a performance-based compensation structure that rewards employees who work harder and better than others. Therefore, employees know that their efforts will be rewarded, and the better they perform, the more they make.
Provide Career Development Opportunities
Salary and benefits are great motivators for employees, but career advancement is a better long-term motivator, especially for high-performing employees.
If you want to retain your best employees, they should know there are opportunities for them to climb up the ladder, whether at your firm or elsewhere.
Therefore, offer your best employees chances to gain more skills, and hold leadership positions or mentorship opportunities as they will be with you for as long as possible.
There are many strategies you can use to retain high-performing employees. The above is a fraction of the ways you can keep them working for your firm. Ensure you understand what motivates each employee and use it to retain their services. Doing so is a seminal part of management and leadership.