Employee retention is, always has been, and probably forever will be a top concern for HR, recruiters, and management. With its associated costs and cultural impact, keeping retention rates high is a way for organizations to save on recruiting and onboarding costs while increasing employee loyalty and trust.
Planning an effective retention strategy needs to go beyond analyzing retention rates and explore the factors impacting retention: culture, recognition, personal development, compensation, and loyalty.
Let’s explore some of the metrics most impacting retention:
eNPS for retention
eNPS (employee net promoter score) measures one simple aspect of employee experience: would your employees recommend your organization to their friends?
This metrics is closely connected to retention because employees aren’t going to recommend that their friends join an organization they don’t intend to stay with. Low eNPS scores are often due to a number of factors, including poor salary, toxic culture, bad management, or excessive workload.
To increase retention, you’ll want to keep an eye on eNPS. If your overall score is under 10, then you have work to do to keep your people happy—and on your team. If you’re seeing retention issues, checking out your organization’s eNPS will help figure out if it’s a culture issue.
Career path ratio for retention
It’s safe to assume that your employees want to grow, change, and develop. Most of us want to learn new skills and become stronger contributors. Career path ratio measures how effectively we’re doing that and is closely correlated with retention.
Career path ratio is a metric of internal movement measuring horizontal movement and promotions. While horizontal movements are often considered to be a sign of growth and can help employees develop existing skillsets and experiences, they also can decrease productivity, increase recruiting costs, and cause uncertainty among employees about job security. Promotions, however, are often used to promote engagement and retention. The possibility of promotion drives motivated employees to push themselves towards a goal; managers can use promotion paths as a means to get employees to develop pride in their work and seek more opportunities to show initiative.
Lack of internal movement is correlated with low retention—you’ve seen Office Space, you know that dead-end jobs aren’t known for generating loyalty and employee satisfaction. To understand the cause of a retention issue, examining career path issue is a great place to start.
Salary change for retention
Is it just me or is life expensive? The landlord raises the rent, the baker charges more for bread, and no matter how much money you make, it can feel like life’s costs are increasing in tandem (except for you, Elon Musk). Measuring salary change, the increase or decrease in salaries measure team-, department-, or organization-wide, can help you identify the cause for low retention.
We all want to feel valued at work, and salary increases are a big part of that. If your company isn’t regularly offering raises and bonuses, you could be pushing employees towards more generous employees—and, ultimately, spending much more money on recruitment than you would have spent on retention.
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Diversity metrics
Diverse teams outperform homogenous ones. Their employees are happier, more engaged, and more innovative. If you’re finding that your employees aren’t sticking around, you might want to think about who you’re hiring.
Age, race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status are all elements of cultural diversity that should be present and vibrant across your organization. Making sure that your teams represent a vibrant cross-section of diversity will help you keep your people engaged and loyal.
Hire for retention
From the first days of onboarding, you should be focused on retention. By keeping an eye on people metrics, you’ll be able to quickly identify potential causes of low retention and address them to keep your workplace and people happy and healthy.
