Retaining Your Long-Term Employees

In earlier articles, we talked about retaining new employees and those who has been with you for one year. This article focuses on the retention of the seasoned employee. These employees have been with the company for an extended period and perform efficient, high quality work. They are experts in their role, a manager's dream - an employee who know what to do and just does it. You can relax now, right? Wrong. Successful managers still must keep an eye on the seasoned employee because you can lose them without knowing you are at risk. Employees have different styles of dealing with their careers. Some are vocal about needing challenges or if they are not happy, while others quietly look elsewhere when they get bored. The cost of losing an experienced employee can be up to one and a half times their annual salary. That's a lot of time and money.

Successful managers who are able to retain seasoned employees find out what is motivating them to stay. It may change over time, but knowing why provides important insight into retention efforts. By knowing what they are, you are able to build retention activities around those reasons further securing their loyalty to your company. For example, a seasoned employee may want to do exactly what they are doing because they have other challenges in their lives. Maybe they have a family and want to spend more time with them, so they are willing to trade a little boredom with performing their job effortlessly. Maybe they are starting a new family or going to school and prefer the comfort of a familiar role without too much stress. Perhaps they enjoy working with their team members or enjoy working with you...their manager. Maybe they see growth opportunities and are waiting for the right time to discuss it with you. The point is, whether they share their reasons for staying or not, keep a pulse on where they are now...don't assume you know.

Learning and development is always important in retaining employees, even if they are happy in their role. Check to see what challenges or variety you can add to their workload. Perhaps the seasoned employee could be mentors for new or one year old employees. Allow them to participate in professional organizations. Offer them the role of team leader, trainer or liaison. Have them be part of a brainstorming team responsible for quality control. Whatever the case, utilize their knowledge and their productivity to further the business.

It is important that managers don't become complacent with long term employees. Even though you get so busy with your business, don't ever assume you know what your employees are thinking. You should expect the employee to participate in the management of their career and always be thinking about your employees learning capacity. Reward them for their contributions and include a hearty dose of recognition. Find time to let them know you appreciate them for what they do.

The facts are that during your career as a manager, you will lose people. If you focus on your employees, you will minimize your turnover. Many inexperienced or poor managers get very busy with the day-to-day business and don't realize that their attention needs to be on the employees doing the work. Midyear and annual performance reviews are not frequent or sufficient enough to give feedback to an employee. As you gain experience as a manager or lose enough people, you will become aware that your best work will come about when you make it a point to meet individually with your team members every week or as often as possible. Take time for weekly or monthly updates and have discussion about any challenges or concerns inside or outside the company. Set a goal to do whatever it takes to help your employees perform their jobs better, and listen. You will learn a lot.