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Finding the Real Reason for Employee Turnover

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If your IT team is experiencing high turnover, simply replacing your staff will not resolve the problem. You need to get to the root of the problem in order to create lasting change. This will reduce the amount of time and money needed to find and retain top talent.

Here are three ways to uncover why your IT staff are leaving so you can improve retention.

1. Ask Questions

Find out the specific reasons why your IT team members are leaving. For instance, ask what they like and dislike about their job, what your team and company are doing well, and concrete ways you can improve. Encourage your employees to be as honest and candid as possible. Also, go through your current and former employee files to determine whether there are known issues within the organization. Problems such as ineffective onboarding, policies inconsistently enforced, or tensions with coworkers may have been discussed during exit interviews. Talk with leadership about this information and take action to improve.

2. Conduct a Survey

Hire a third party to survey your current and former IT staff about their true impressions of your team and the company. Clarify that all answers will remain anonymous. Look for themes in engagement surveys, stay interviews, and exit surveys to uncover reasons why your employees remain or leave. Perhaps the staff who left after a short time felt that additional training was necessary to do their jobs. Or, they did not receive enough recognition or see enough career development opportunities. Talk with leadership about implementing specific improvements to increase employee satisfaction. Share a follow-up survey to see how the changes impacted your team. Continue the process on a regular basis.

3. Evaluate Company Culture  

Determine whether there are issues with carrying out your company mission, vision, and values. Perhaps your IT staff feel they do not have a say in leadership decisions. Or, they may not believe that equity is evident in the organization. Compare the demographic data of your departing team members to the data from your assessment. Then, talk with leadership about how to resolve the problems. This may include the formation of employee focus groups to focus on specific areas for improvement first, then move to other areas later.

Add to Your IT Team

When you need to add IT professionals to your team, get in touch with RightStone. Learn more today.

Considering Workplace Flexibility? What Employers Need to Know

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The ongoing need for stronger work-life integration is one reason why flexibility in the workplace is so important. For instance, allowing your employees to work during the hours they are most productive helps them remain engaged and accomplish more. Also, encouraging independent work as much as possible shows you expect personal accountability for finishing tasks on time. Plus, letting your team fit in personal responsibilities around their work tasks reduces burnout.

Discover some ways to provide flexibility for your IT team and how your company can benefit.

Personalized Workspaces

Suggest that your IT staff decorate their work areas to make them feel more personal. This may include displaying pictures of loved ones, using adjustable furniture, or adding plants to a workspace. Creating a unique work area increases engagement and employee morale.

Flexible Schedule

Allow your IT team to set their own work hours. Although they may need to start or end by a certain time while collaborating on a project, provide as much flexibility as possible. Your employees may be able to avoid commuting during rush hour, which reduces stress. Being able to control their schedule also increases daily attendance and efficiency.

Autonomy

Encouraging your IT staff to work independently increases productivity. As long as the work is finished on time and according to expectations, let your staff decide how and when they handle their projects. Having the freedom to complete their tasks with little supervision promotes confidence and trust.

Quality of Life

Your IT professionals experience greater life satisfaction when they can fit in personal responsibilities with professional ones. This may include participation in a morning fitness class to reach a health and wellness goal, attending their child’s ballet recital in the afternoon, or leaving work early one evening per week for a professional development class. Being able to fulfill personal interests during typical work hours increases job satisfaction.

Employee Retention

The more flexibility your IT team has, the longer they remain with your organization. Because employees want more control over fitting both their personal and professional responsibilities each week, they look for companies that provide perks in this area. Longevity among your team members results in lower costs to replace them.

Hire Top IT Professionals

When you need to hire the best IT staff, turn to RightStone. Learn more today.

4 Ways to Develop Company Culture that Helps You Keep Your Best Employees

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When it comes to building a strong and talented workforce, recruitment is only half of the story; it’s equally important for employers to implement strategies and policies aimed at retaining their top employees once they’ve been brought on board. In pursuit of this goal, the development and maintenance of an optimized workplace culture should be a top priority.

What is workplace culture?

“Workplace culture” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, but many professionals only have a vague understanding of what it actually means. We’re here to clear the air on this subject.

Simply put, a company’s culture is the aggregate of values, personalities, workplace norms, and qualities that endow it with a unique and intangible feeling. In other words, when we talk about culture in this context, we’re talking about the quality of the day-to-day employee experience at a particular workplace.

4 Ways to Develop Company Culture that Helps You Keep Your Best Employees

With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why building a strong company culture should be a top priority for every employer. Healthy workplace cultures lead to happy and engaged employees, who in turn produce high-quality work more consistently. There are plenty of studies (such as this one) that have proven this to be true.

So what can employers do now that will allow them to build an optimized workplace culture? Here are four simple and effective ways to get started:

1. Offer flexible work options to your employees.

Recent research has conclusively shown that employees tend to be happier in work environments that offer flexible scheduling and remote work options than those that do not.

2. Increase (and improve) your communication with employees.

It’s important that you make time to check in with your employees on a fairly regular basis to make sure that they’re able to voice any concerns and that their needs at work are being met. Managers who only rarely engage and communicate with their employees will consistently find themselves overseeing a workforce that by and large feels isolated, manipulated, and dissatisfied.

3. Acknowledge your employees’ achievements.

Managers routinely miss opportunities to improve workplace morale and increase feelings of cohesion by giving public praise to an employee who has made a notable accomplishment. By acknowledging an employee’s achievement in front of his or her peers, you can quickly and easily communicate to your employees that they work within a culture that values individual contributions and communal support.

4. Ask for your employees’ input when making important decisions.

There’s perhaps no more effective way of providing your employees with a sense of camaraderie than by including them in the decision-making process. You don’t need to ask for their input on every decision, obviously. But when you’re considering making a change to the workplace that will ultimately affect the day-to-day experience of your employees, you should make every effort to ask for and be open to their input. In all likelihood, they will be able to offer you valuable insights into how the workplace as a whole might be improved.

Building an optimized workplace is not something that can be achieved overnight, but there are steps that can be taken every day – some small and some large – to gradually work towards a workplace that will help to make your employees feel content. To learn more about what you can do to build a stronger workplace culture as well as a happier, more secure workforce, contact us today.