Whether you’re a front-line employee, team leader, manager, or chief, your team is one of the most valuable assets your organization has.
Without dedicated employees, you wouldn’t be able to complete necessary projects, connect with your constituents, increase trust in the community, or build your brand presence.
Unfortunately, too many leaders focus on trivial issues that they forget to engage and retain their staff. Around 3 million Americans quit their job each month for better opportunities.
Now that remote work solutions are making it easier for people to find new roles anywhere, it’s even harder to convince them to not only join your organization but to stay with you too.
With difficult times on the horizon for most law enforcement agencies, here are some of the top strategies you can use to retain your employees:
Get Salary and Benefits Right
Although there’s a lot more to having a happy workforce than offering them the right salary, it pays to provide a decent wage. Most of the employees that are looking for jobs right now know how much their skills are worth. If you’re not willing to pay your employees what they’re worth, they’ll find another organization will.
Around 56% of employees say that healthcare and insurance concerns also keep them at their job. If you can’t offer the most competitive salary in your area, maybe you can make the job more appealing by providing additional benefits.
Everything from better flexible working options to access to private healthcare can boost your chances of getting and keeping the talent you need.
Listen To Your Team Members
The easiest way to ensure that you keep employees around is to give them a voice and listen to what they have to say. Employees are more likely to feel invested in an organization that takes their opinions and insights seriously.
With that in mind, ensure that your organizational culture encourages feedback and regular discussions between leaders and the front-line staff. If your employees aren’t happy with how you’re currently running things, give them the opportunity to make suggestions about issues they might like to change.
Listening to your employees, even if that just means giving them a way to give anonymous feedback to your leaders, could mean that you become aware of significant issues much faster. This way, you can fix issues before they grow too large.
Create Leaders, not Bosses
Everyone dreams of being the boss at their company. However, the reality is that it means a lot more to become a memorable leader. The unfortunate truth is that most of the employees in the current landscape don’t leave their organization at all – they leave their manager.
The people in your team responsible for leading others should have all the characteristics of an inspirational and motivational leader.
Look for people who can handle challenges calmly and think outside of the box.
Provide your leaders with training that will help them to manage positive and negative feedback and support their teams in achieving their goals.
A good leader doesn’t just dump the responsibility for mistakes onto employees and scream at people until work gets done. Genuinely incredible leaders are the people that keep the team moving forward, even in times of trouble.
Invest in Your Employees’ Future
If you’re not going to invest in your employees, why should they invest their time in your organization? How can you invest in making your staff members more skilled in their roles?
Most employees want to see a future for themselves in your organization, which means that they need to continue developing their knowledge and talents. Offering training and educational opportunities are great ways to ensure that your staff members feel they’re moving consistently in the right direction.
You can even build mentorship programs so that employees can teach each other.
If you’re not sure where to get started when it comes to offering training opportunities, try having one-to-one meetings with your staff. This could be a great way to develop individual plans for each of your employees.
Make Them Proud to Work for You
Finally, we’re living in an age where employees don’t just want a great salary and lots of benefits from the job. Your employees want to feel like they’re working for an organization making a positive difference in the community.
In today’s activism-fuelled environment, you’re either part of the problem or the solution.
Find out what your employees are passionate about and get involved. This could mean creating a new strategy for your business where you can cut down on outdated crime reduction strategies. Another option involves getting involved with local charities and non-profits or investing in your local community.
The more you show your employees that you care about more than just money, the more they’ll feel happy working with you, and the more likely they’ll stay with you for the long term.