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    How can I keep my best members of staff?

    High staff turnover and the loss of your best performing employees can be crippling to forward progress, but there are a number of ways to keep your prized individuals. From day-to-day engagement to career paths and from increased responsibility to flexible working, find out why it comes down to a balance of contributing factors.

    Ways to help you deal with it:

    Action plan

    Develop the right approach to health and wellbeing

    Effort : High
    Impact : High

    While some changes you make in your business can adopt a more standardised approach, looking after the health and wellbeing of your people is something that needs more tailored approach. Your employees have chosen to work for you for a reason, but that will only last in today's day and age if an employer continues to proactively ensure the stresses and strains of work are not becoming too much. There's a lot to learn from the way others have made improvements, but it all comes down to getting your people involved from minute one.

    ACTION PLANS are a structured list of steps designed to help you approach tackling a particular business challenge.

    • We explain why each step is important
    • Customise by setting your own completion dates and assign tasks
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available

    Action plan

    Create your company's future leaders

    Effort : High
    Impact : Medium

    Recruitment is expensive, particularly when it comes to senior leadership roles. Cultivating from within lets you firstly identify who is most engaged with your business and where it is trying to get to and then, bit by bit, set out an individual plan that lets you and your management team delegate more and take on new challenges safe in the knowledge that there are more people to share the responsibility load.

    Action plan

    Introducing an incentive scheme

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : High

    It's the carrot and stick scenario – even the most engaged need an occasional nudge towards desired behaviour, attitude and action. While small businesses don't have the bottomless pockets some big corporates have, incentive schemes can be drawn up on a budget and actually take advantage of the smaller set up. However, it's important to put the work in at the beginning so that incentivised actions align with what your business is looking to achieve in the long term.

    Guide

    An introduction to keeping your best members of staff

    Retaining your best members of staff is essential for the health and success of your business – yet it’s harder than ever to hold on to this kind of talent.

    GUIDES break a challenge down, providing important context and real-world experiences.

    • Based on SME experiences, not corporate jargon
    • Filled with real-world stories
    • Achievable steps every business can take

    Other support that’s available

    Food for thought on keeping your stars

    Food for thought on keeping your stars

    High-performing employees are great, but they also are generally very ambitious and attractive to other organisations. If they don’t like where they are, they may find another job elsewhere.

    Asking the right questions

    Asking the right questions

    By performing exit interviews, you’ll have an opportunity to get honest feedback about positive and negative experiences, identify potential areas of opportunity for increasing employee retention and get valuable insight to help hire their replacement. Get some help from Indeed.

    How other businesses have tackled something similar

    Derek Eassey, VP at Brandwatch

    Real business story

    Upskill staff or they'll look elsewhere

    By helping staff achieve their working ambitions, companies that prioritise the upskilling of current and new employees find that staff stay longer and can help boost overall productivity..
    Kathryn Roberts, Adzuna

    Real business story

    Remote working attracts better talent – and diversity of thought

    Distributed workforces reduce costs, increase the pool of candidates and create a higher level of job satisfaction, but education and communication are key..

    Real business story

    Treat every new employee as a potential leader from day one

    Nurturing junior employees to become future leaders not only helps to increase engagement and build solid teams, but it supports business growth in a stable, sustainable way..

    The questions lots of businesses are trying to answer

    What issue is keeping you awake at night? A bit of targeted support is often all you need to overcome those challenges.

    Select a topic

    Digital

    How can I improve the digital presence my business has? How should I go about collecting data to improve my business? How should I use the data I have to improve decision making? How can I streamline and automate some of our business processes? How do I work out the best digital sales channels to use? How do I assess and choose the right technology to improve business operations? How do I effectively seek external digital support? How can I understand what digital tools or support my business needs? How do I know if my technology is robust enough for growth? How should I best budget and plan for new technology investments?

    Leadership & Strategy

    How do I learn to become a better leader? How do I improve the communication in my business? How do I get staff interested in our vision and values? How can I reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses as a leader? How do I give my team autonomy and get better at delegating? As a leader, how do I learn to trust others within my organisation? How do I apply learnings from other businesses to my own company? How should my role as a business leader evolve with the company’s growth? How can I balance short-term needs with long-term targets? How do I get better at noticing and reacting to warning signs?

    People & Team

    How can I improve my hiring and onboarding practices? How can I develop the skillsets of my workforce? How can I develop career paths for my staff? How can I run a better appraisals process? How should I performance manage my staff? How do I deal with a challenging member of staff? How can I increase staff engagement and motivation? How can I keep my best members of staff? How do I manage an effective remote workforce? How can I reduce employee turnover?

    Planning

    How do I better inform my business plans? How do I know when to scale up my business? How can I define and communicate my vision for success? How do I ensure my business can navigate a dip in trading? How do I know when to invest in my business? How can I get better at looking internally at my business? How can I get staff interested in the financial situation? How can I make my business more resilient to change? How can I balance ambition with setting realistic goals? How can I work out what required skillsets are missing in the business?

    Sales & Growth

    How can we develop new products and services? How do I develop a clear unique selling point? How can we better serve our most loyal customers? How do I financially plan for new opportunities? How do I build a network to support my business? How can I get a better return on investment from my marketing? How can I identify new customers to target? How do I create targets and KPIs for my staff? How do I make sure my team and processes are ready for growth? How do I benchmark my business against competitors?
    All