Staffing
Show Thanks to Improve Staff Retention
The holidays are a stressful time for a client-facing business. Improve staff retention by making sure your staff know that they always have your...
Staff retention is important for small business. Keeping long-term staff improves processes, builds community, and makes the life of the business owner easier.
Clients are the lifeblood of any small business. As a business owner, you are wholly dependent on them for revenue. So it makes sense to focus your efforts on creating the optimal client experience. But you’re making a costly mistake if you’re focusing too much on your clients, and not enough on your staff. Staff are the core of business operations, so building a strong team is one of the best things you can do for your bottom line.
Here are the top 5 reasons to invest in keeping your staff members around for the long-term.
1. Save a lot of money
Recruiting and hiring new staff is expensive. Really expensive. It takes about 6-9 months in salary to pay for recruiting and training expenses. So if you’re replacing someone with a $40,000 annual salary, you’ll be paying about $20,000 to $30,000 to do it. It’s a lot more cost effective to build your ideal team and then invest in keeping them there.
2. Save a lot of time
You’re a business owner. You’re busy. You don’t want to spend all of your time recruiting and training new staff. If you have a group of happy, loyal staff members you’ll be able to spend more time on the parts of your business you want to be focusing on. You’ll feel a lot happier too, since you won’t be constantly worried about filling positions.
3. Maintain efficient processes
If you have employees working for you, then you know how much you lean on them for the day-to-day stuff. They are a part of your operations and the heart of your community, so any turnover causes disruption that affects business.
New employees will never have what seasoned employees have: deep company knowledge. Your business has it’s own quirks and unique processes, and each new employee has to learn them. Retaining your staff long-term ensures that these knowledge gaps are minimal and keeps your operations running smoothly.
4. Strengthen your community
A group has trouble bonding when members are constantly coming and going. This applies both to staff/staff relationships and staff/client relationships. Staff members who stay longer at your business have more loyalty to it and are more familiar with your clients. They’ll be more invested in the business operations, and it will reflect in their interactions with clients and with each other.
5. Improve client retention
If your business is a revolving door of staff members, clients will notice. Your clients keep coming back to your business because it feels like a community they belong to. So when they see the same staff members each time they come in, they feel like they’re being greeted by a friend. If the business feels too impersonal, they may choose go somewhere else.
Bonus: give yourself peace of mind
In addition to being cheaper, it’s much less stressful on you and your business to keep the staff you have. Experienced staff means peace of mind for you since you won’t have to worry about checking up on them all of the time. You’re life will be a lot easier if you build a staff that is happy, that you trust, and that is likely to stay at your business for a long time.
