Even if you own a small business, there will always be applications when you post to fill a vacancy. Unfortunately, if you add adjectives such as competent, trained, qualified, experienced, etc., to your list of requirements, the number of applications will come down drastically! The truth is that the best workers always gravitate towards the biggest employers.
Consequently, companies in the middle always find it hard to strike a balance between overpaying to fill their job vacancies and hiring an incompetent workforce. Suffice to say that if you have managed to recruit, train, and build a team of efficient workers amidst all this, you should most definitely make an effort towards retaining as many of them as possible, for as long as possible. It’s not easy but the following tips should help.
Keep their Compensation Packages Up to Date
Efficient workers must be compensated adequately if you wish to retain them. Now, comparatively smaller companies simply cannot pay their employees as much as their multibillion-dollar counterparts can and neither should they ever try to. As an SME owner, you must only keep your direct competition in mind and compensate your employees accordingly. Your company is not competing against the large enterprises directly because it cannot at this time. Such a time may come, but do not attempt to do so prematurely.
Instead, you are only trying to keep your best employees from being snatched up by competitors within the same scale and market. To get ahead of the competition without overbudgeting, consider preparing an adequately personalized, total rewards compensation package for each of your key employees. Give them more value for their time, service, effort, and performance, so that they find enough reasons to stay where they are.
Training Replacements: Encourage Mentorship
Very few people work in just one company throughout their work life, so most of your key team members may leave at some point or the other. However, there is a time proven method to avoid most of the problems that usually follow such a loss. Let your key employees train their own proteges, so that they can take over the role of their mentor once he/she leaves the company. There is simply no better way to find a replacement for a key role than that. After all, there is a reason why interns exist!
Build and Maintain Personal Relationships with Your team
When it comes to direct competition, size is a small-scale enterprise’s biggest disadvantage against large scale enterprises. However, it can also be turned into one of your biggest advantages as far as employee retention is concerned. Executive leaders in big MNCs cannot possibly maintain personal relationships with each and every one of their best workers. On the other hand, small scale business owners can most certainly do that.
Human beings are driven by many things and even in business, personal connections, pulls, liaisons, etc., play pivotal roles across the industry. Make it a practice to know your small and efficient team as well as you can. In addition to motivating them, it will also give them one more reason to stay with the company.
