Employee retention is one of the things that many employers find hard to deal with. Even when they provide their employees rich benefit plans, it is still hard for them to stop their employees from leaving the company.
In the voices of many HR experts, low employee retention could be caused by insufficient benefits, cultural differences, communication issues, lack of appreciation, and more. No one can really say for sure.
Regardless of the details, employees are leaving a company because they don’t feel satisfied. But oftentimes, before they make the decision to leave, they will communicate the concerns to their managers or higher ups. And this is the perfect time when employers can utilize corporate gifting. Continue reading this article to learn different ways to increase employee retention, especially how corporate gifting is key.
What Is Employee Retention?
An organization’s ability to keep its employees refers to employee retention. The rate can be expressed by a simple statistic (in percentage). Employee retention, however, is frequently regarded as the effort employers make to keep their employees.
Employee retention is the cornerstone that an organization's success is built on. It's when employees feel cared for, valued, and appreciated, so they feel ambitious and eager to go the extra mile for their employers.
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor, the national average turnover rate in 2019, 2020, 2021 was respectfully 41.5%, 56.8%, and 57.3%. It even hit a 69.2% in the Professional and business services industry. That is why businesses are trying to keep their workers happy by offering them perks such as wellness programs and insurance plans in conjunction with profit-sharing options.
Looking at the trend, it is only going to get harder and more expensive to retain employees. Every employer will be looking for ways to retain their talents, even if it means spending a ton more.
How Does Employee Retention Affect a Business?
How Employee Retention Affects the Organization?
Before you spend time and money to improve your employee retention, you should first understand why it will be helpful and how it might affect your business.
In short, employee retention affects an organization’s performance, productivity, culture, profitability, and customer satisfaction in positive and negative ways. While the high costs of turnover make retention essential for an organization’s future success, retaining the wrong employees can hinder success, and so does letting go of the wrong employees.
One key statistics from Oracle Netsuite tells us that on average, a higher retention rate can maximize a company’s profits up to 4 times. With this information alone, it is hard to ignore the effects employee retention will bring to business.
Some Other Statistics on Employee Retention
Let’s take a look at some statistics from SpringWorks to help you better understand why employee retention is important:
- 50% of all organizations globally have difficulty retaining their most valued employees.
- The cost to replace a highly-trained employee can exceed 200% of their annual salary.
- Employees who are not adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit within the next year.
- Companies with a culture-based environment see up to a 72% decrease in turnover rate
- Companies that support remote work have 25% lower employee turnover than companies that don't.
- Highly Engaged employees are 40% less likely to be looking for a job compared to Actively Disengaged employees.
- Strong management transparency leads to 30% better employee retention.
- 90% of workers said they are more likely to stay at a company that takes and acts on feedback(Emplify).
the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) also reported that on average it costs a company 6 to 9 months of an employee's salary to find a suitable replacement.
With all the statistics and information above, we can conclude that employee retention affects business growth directly.
5 proven ways to Improve your Employee Retention
Before you dive into finding ways to improve your company’s employee retention, you must first understand why people are leaving for other jobs or something else.
According to Hubspot’s survey of 500 marketing professionals, 41% of them believe that lack of work-life balance is the main reason for them to leave their jobs. On the other hand, the same 20% of the same group of people also say that burnout from work is another big reason for quitting.
Others also mention lack of career growth opportunities, lack of remote work options, lack of flexible work schedule, and path changing are all reasons that an employee might consider leaving his/her current job.
With clear reasons mentioned above, you can now plan how to increase your employee retention accordingly. Here are some ways you can consider:
1. Create company’s core values
Company cultures are very important to business growth. Without them, it will be hard for the company to stay focused, let alone the employees.
This is one of the first things that a business owner or CEO needs to think about when starting a business. What kind of people you want working with you, what values you want to see in them.
You need to create values that you believe will be the pillars of your business, and continuously reinforce those values to remind your employees not only the goals of the company but what kind of work environment they would like to work at.
2. Hire the right people
As mentioned, the cost to hire a new employee to replace another is 200% or more of the employee’s pay. So it starts all the way from the beginning!
You need to fortify your interview process, but don’t get it the wrong way, we are not saying making your interview harder.
The difficulty of an interview should be determined by the level of position that you are trying to hire. But if you want to hire the right people who have similar values to your core culture, then you have to somehow implement questions in the interview that can help you see whether the candidates have such values.
3. Give recognition and feedback.
Even when they don’t talk about it, employees want to feel valued and appreciated for their contributions. A great place to start is by building a culture of giving employees the opportunity to voice their opinion, as this can be very impactful on what you produce in terms of your project. Giving them an environment where they are heard will stop them from seeking this feeling from other sources.
Here are a few ways you can build recognition and feedback into your company culture:
- Listening — conduct quarterly surveys to gather employee's anonymous feedback.
- One-on-one meetings — host meetings to review performance together (monthly), offer and ask for any feedback on the employees’ current career development.
- Employee recognition program — build recognition through peer-to-peer recognition, public and private praise from managers, and company awards on the contributions of any milestone.
Check out another article to help you better appreciate your employees.
4. Cultivate inclusion
Social interactions between employees/employers are very important, after all, employees spend 40 hours (~25%) at work together every week. If your employees were to feel left out, they would start to drift away, which can again end up in them leaving the company.
That is why cultivating inclusion is important. It can positively impact employees’ well-being, performance, and productivity. It is also key to building a rich company culture.
Diverse teams give employees a sense of belonging and connectedness to the company. Employees with a strong sense of belonging are six times more likely to be engaged.
5. Conduct exit interviews
It is impossible for you to avoid employee turnover at all, even companies like Google, Meta, Amazon have employees leaving them quite frequently. But lowering the rate of employees leaving your company is definitely doable.
Every time you lose an employee, you should reflect on what changes you can make to improve the situation.
Utilize exit surveys to get direct feedback from your soon-to-be ex-employees. Ask them exactly why they choose to leave and what are some suggestions they may have for improving the company. This is often the time where your employees stop holding back and give you the most feedback because it’s the last few days for them anyway. Don’t waste this opportunity to learn how your company can be better for your employees.
Employee Gifting Can Be the Solution to Your Decreasing Employee Retention!
Now that you know 5 proven ways to improve your employee retention, here is how gifting can further enhance the effects.
In each of the 5 ways above, you can implement corporate gifting to reinforce a good impression and memory of your company. Here is how:
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When you successfully create your company’s core values, you will need to constantly remind your employees. You can create a gifting campaign quarterly that sends out meaningful and useful gifts along with a message that thanks your employees for helping you enrich these cultures.
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The process of interviewing and hiring is tough not only for your HR but also for the candidates. Gifting is a way to show gratitude and appreciation to the candidates who are willing to go through with the interview. You can prepare small giveaways for interviewees, regardless of how far they went. If your budget allows, make your gifts more exquisite and memorable. This way even if the interviewees decided not to join, you can still build a good employer branding.
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Recognizing your employees’ effort is known to be important, but the question is oftentimes, how. There are many ways you can do that, such as a peer recognition program, public announcement, incentives, etc. One of the best ways is definitely gifting. With the correct gifts, you can make your employees feel that you really care about them and make them feel like you are trying to build a good relationship with them.
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Inclusion is often practiced by employee engagement activities, such as team building events, company events, team lunch, and more. Of all these events, holiday events are the best to implement some corporate gifting. As an employer, you can sponsor your employees to host a Christmas gift exchange party, where one employee can find their own gifts for another employee. This way you not only improve your employee engagement but also make sure they have a lot of fun.
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Many companies have exit interviews, and of course, the reason is to get feedback and make improvements to raise employee retention. Intention is good, but many fail to consider the feeling of those who are leaving, which could lead to them badmouthing the company. To show appreciation, you can give them farewell gifts and wish them good luck for the next journey with sincerity.
8 Methods for Improving Your Employee Corporate Gifting Strategy
The methods below will make your employee corporate gifting strategy come to life, and make a real impact!
1. Craft Personalized Experiences
Tailoring gifts to individual interests creates a more meaningful connection, improving the likelihood of leaving a lasting impression on prospects. This personal touch enhances the effectiveness of corporate gifting.
2. Tailor Gifts to Seniority
Customizing the gifting strategy based on the prospect's persona and seniority ensures that higher-value prospects receive more substantial gifts. This tiered approach aligns with diverse prospect needs, enhancing the overall impact of the corporate gifting initiative.
3. Align Gifts with Sales Cycle
Adapting the corporate gifting strategy to the prospect's stage in the sales cycle ensures relevance. Starting with more generic gifts for early touchpoints and progressing to personalized and creative gifts for established customers improves the effectiveness of each gift.
4. Foster Reciprocal Relationships
Approaching corporate gifting with a giving mindset, without expecting immediate reciprocation, fosters genuine relationships. This mindset contributes to building long-term connections and enhances the overall success of the corporate gifting strategy.
5. Harness Seasonal Relevance
Connecting corporate gifting to seasonal holidays or national days adds relevance and memorability to the gifts. This strategy increases the chances of engagement and makes the corporate gifting efforts more impactful.
6. Integrate with Sales Cadence
Integrating tactical gift sends within the sales cadence enhances the overall effectiveness of outreach efforts. Gifts between calls and emails help the business stand out, contributing to improved prospect engagement and response rates.
7. Streamline with Corporate Gifting Tools
Utilizing corporate gifting tools like Reachdesk streamlines the gifting process and allows for better measurement of ROI. Automation tools improve efficiency and effectiveness, making the corporate gifting strategy more scalable and measurable.
8. Celebrate Client Milestones
Using corporate gifting to celebrate client milestones strengthens client relationships and contributes to client retention. Thoughtful gifts on partnership anniversaries showcase appreciation and enhance the overall success of the corporate gifting strategy.
Raising employee Retention is an ever ongoing process, there are too many possible reasons as to why someone wants to leave your company. The best way is to really show your employees that you care and truly appreciate (with gifts) their effort. Show them you are working hard not only for yourself, but also for them.