How to increase ROI on staff retention programmes

81% of companies in the UK perceive employee turnover as having a negative impact on their business. Yet how many have a retention budget?

Although I've been working in the "soft skills" field for some time, I find that the average FD or CEO is sceptical that money spent on surveys and retention initiatives will pay dividends. Yet practical steps to ensuring that employee engagement is measurable and has a positive impact on the bottom line are possible with time and a little bit of creativity.

In my view, the onus is on everyone within the organisation to prove the business case for any engagement or staff retention programme in order to secure the funding in the first place. Take some of the budget spent on advertising and external brand positioning and invest it in an engagement programme that will generate a return on investment in ideas and new ways of working.

How to make the programme succeed:

• Set out to prove that engaged employees are more effective at delivering against the core elements of your company's vision
• Make the holders of the engagement / retention budgets accountable to internal customers and the budget review dependent upon customer satisfaction versus agreed deliverables
• View staff as customers and therefore, product uptake as a success measure
• Ensure that measurement is of the "little and frequent" / pulse taking variety rather than cumbersome and expensive annual surveys
• Focus on tangible outcomes
• Allow a realistic period of time to implement the programme and measure results to ensure it is sustainable

Recrion constantly benchmarks best practice globally when it comes to employee engagement. View our Employee Engagement Barometer or call us on +44 1780 484910 to discuss how we can help you solve your attrition and employee engagement challenges.