LSA Global Insights Newsletter: January 2017

January 30, 2017

The Only 16-Step Employee Retention Strategy You Need

photo of 4 happy people together

Talent management matters. The ability to attract, develop, engage and retain talent accounts for 29% of the difference between high and low performing organizations. 


Do you want to know the secret to lowering turnover and increasing engagement? It's all too simple. Treat your employees well. Increasing retention isn't a complex web of 100 different metrics; increasing retention comes from treating your employees like the people they are.

Retention of top talent is essential to the bottom line. Every time you lose an employee, you lose money, time and employee morale. Here are just some of the costs associated with employee attrition:
  • Lost business if they go to a competitor
  • Lost engagement when retained employees see a peer leaving
  • Lost money and time hiring a replacement
  • Lost money, time and team productivity while training the new employee
  • Lost productivity while the new employee is in the early stages of the learning curve
  • Lost business through inevitable learning errors
However, if you can increase employee retention, you can eliminate costs and reap additional benefits. Think of employees as an appreciating, rather than a depreciating, asset; they are worth more to your company the longer they work for you. Additionally, a consistent workforce is necessary to build a high performance company culture and organizational health.  

We believe that people are at their best when they feel happy, healthy, and heard. This is the key to retaining top talent-if you can make and support the best version of a person's self, it will be near impossible to get them to leave.

5 Steps to Keep Employees Happy
  1. Hire right from the beginning.  A lot of workplace unrest comes from the mismatch between how the job/company was presented and what the actual job/culture entails, or between the capabilities of the new hire and what is actually needed to do the job. These mismatches create anxiety and mistrust, both on the employee's and employer's sides. Not only will properly informed and qualified candidates be happier in their jobs, hiring the right candidate will also reduce the number of people that leaders will have to let go. 
  2. Provide challenging work and goals.  Employees are happy when they are making important contributions to the team. Challenging work, and goals built around those challenges, provides a sense of accomplishment and pride, both of which are important to employee engagement and retention. 
  3. Recognize your employees, and help them recognize others.  One of the most meaningful gifts you can give an employee is recognition. Though there are endless ways to accomplish this, a sincere "good job" in front of peers is sometimes all that is needed. 
  4. Give employees clear expectations, direction, and purpose. Employees are happiest when they are delivering on the expectations set for them. When they don't know what the expectations are, they feel adrift, spending their work hours checking boxes without knowing why. Connect your employees' tasks with the company's overall direction and purpose, and they will be less likely to leave. 
Engage your employees.  Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward their workplace-and it's deeper and longer-lasting than happiness. Engagement keeps employees going during those rough quarters and makes it easy for them to say they love their jobs. Disengaged employees, on the other hand, are almost 4 times more likely to leave an organization than engaged employees. 




About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned


Employee Engagement & Retention Health Check

silhouettes of business people on a graph with arrows up and down
Are you and your managers engaging and retaining the top talent you need to succeed? 


We define employee engagement as an organization's ability to create a work environment that drives high levels of employee advocacy, discretionary effort and intent to stay. 
  • Employee Advocacy - Do employees think and speak highly of the organization, its leaders, managers, employees, products, quality and future outlook?
  • Discretionary Effort - Do employees think of ways to do their jobs better?
  • Intent to Stay - Do employees want to be a part of the organization?
The highest performing managers create the environment required for their employees to stay and thrive.  Why?  Because engaged employees are more than satisfied, more than committed; they are emotionally connected.  They consistently go out of their way to over-achieve, actively promote your business, and stay with you during good times and bad.

Put simply, engaged employees are more productive AND more profitable.

If you would like to know how you stack up to leading organizations in the areas of employee engagement and retention, then this health check is for you.




About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned