Employee turnover is something all companies like to avoid. You want your employees to stay in their jobs and providing a positive work experience helps achieve that. Great work experiences stem from a great work culture that supports professional growth, ties employees together, and helps everyone feel invested.
What Makes a Positive Work Experience?
What makes for a positive work experience can vary from place to place and person to person. However, the signs of a positive work experience are engaged employees acting as part of a bigger entity.
You achieve this by developing strong workplace culture and ensuring your company is the kind of place where people want to work. Not everyone will be a fit, and that is fine. Part of the job of HR is to make sure the people you hire have the right style to continue to develop this culture.
In contrast, a toxic workplace increases turnover, limits growth, reduces productivity and increases absenteeism and related costs. You should always be alert for potential signs that your workplace is becoming toxic and address those issues immediately. Those who leave will also leave "under a cloud," leaving bad employment reviews on Glassdoor and similar sites and undermining your employer brand.
Meanwhile, people who depart your company after a positive work experience do so on good terms. They are more likely to give good reviews, refer your company to friends (either as a service or to work for), and maintain good relations with you that may even lead them to return later in another role. There is, of course, no way to eliminate turnover as people leave jobs for all kinds of reasons. However, you can do your best to eliminate the type that will haunt you later. By promoting a positive work experience, you can ensure that most people who leave your company will do so on good terms.
Create a Work Culture Based on Personal Growth
In 2021, 80% of employees who left their roles did so due to concerns about career advancement. Younger workers have specifically perceived changing jobs every few years as necessary for career advancement.
Employees want to feel they can grow within your company and that their time is valuable. If you don't invest in them and give them trust, they will likely think leaving is the way to earn more money or get a more challenging role. If instead, you develop a work culture in which upskilling your staff is vital, they will feel as if you want them to grow and improve. It's essential to provide soft and transferable skills training that supports your employees throughout their careers, rather than only offering courses on things that are explicitly valuable for their current job.
That, in turn, makes employees more productive and dedicated and far less likely to jump ship. Additionally, you can nurture candidates for internal promotion as your company grows. By promoting people internally, you maintain institutional memory and can reduce hiring costs as your external hires will mainly be for lower-level positions that are easier to fill. You can even future-proof your company by hiring people to grow them into a role you want to develop within your company but do not have yet.
Focus on Employees and Give Feedback
Employees also want to feel seen. Meeting with employees one on one to address concerns and provide the opportunity for two-way communication is vital.
Your door should always be open to an employee who has a problem. You can also provide feedback through one-on-ones quickly before a minor concern becomes a significant problem. Don't forget to send messages thanking your staff for their work and expressing gratitude. Even if it's small, everyone appreciates a thank you now and again, and regular small gestures will go a long way.
Partner With a PEO to Save Effort
A significant obstacle between many smaller companies and developing a positive work culture is the sheer amount of essential but mundane tasks that HR must perform. When HR processes payroll, administers benefits, or prints off OSHA signs, they cannot focus on internal tasks, such as updating your employee handbook.
Partnering with a PEO fixes this problem. A professional employer organization handles these mundane tasks for you. They don't replace your HR team but rather free your in-house personnel for more complicated tasks that require an intimate knowledge of your company. With routine HR tasks streamlined, your team has the time to build relationships with your employees.
Additionally, the PEO can give a lot of help and advice based on their experience with their other clients, helping you address issues and develop guidelines that will support your desired culture. Ultimately, your company needs to keep growing and use all your experiences to learn how your culture is perceived. That includes exit interviews, which provide a valuable opportunity to get feedback on your workplace culture and understand why employees depart.
Grow Your Company with Happy Employees
Partnering with a PEO can help you grow and learn from your experiences and give your team the time to invest in your employees, strengthen your workplace culture, and provide a positive work experience. Investing that time in your staff helps ensure that they have the necessary support to grow and learn their roles while feeling reassured that you have their backs.
