What is employee retention?

What is employee retention?

Does this mean you have the same employee for over two years? Five years? Do you keep 80% of your staff? 55%? After all, that’s more than half, right?

So, what is employee retention? A good description would be Keeping the Best Person for the Job On the Job. This sounds simple, but certainly isn’t easy. It can mean a shake-up in your organization.

First, make sure you have the right person in the right job. Some things are obvious. You have someone with a technical degree as your IT specialist. You have the Founder as the Boss. Now, what about the other positions within your organization?

Do you have an introvert as a salesperson? Let’s call her Susan. Sure, she knows your product better than anyone, but she’s shy. It takes everything Susan has in her body to pick up a phone and make a cold call. When you bring her into your office and talk with her, she gets very excited about your product and its uses. She is great at putting together a marketing plan, but she sits back and lets you put together her sales quotas. Her sales are down, but she is a great employee. What is employee retention with Susan?

Would you consider putting her in your marketing department? How about Research and Development? Find someone who may not be as familiar with exactly how each piece of your product interacts with the others, but just loves to talk to people (you will probably find this person in your files as a blabbermouth who can’t sit still in their cubicle). Let’s call this person Frank.

If you have Susan available to answer client questions and put Frank on the phone and in the field doing what he loves (talking), you will have both increased sales and increased employee retention.

Be sure to check out my book at: www.KeepYourStaff.com or my video at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=D1Dt1OHi7mI to find out more.