How Can You Keep Your Best Employees?

What makes us happy at work? Is it compensation, a career path with lots of opportunities, or is it something else? A job that provides us with a sense of meaning and purpose, perhaps? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you, as a Small Business owner, retain your best employees. After all, unhappy workers are more likely to quit their jobs, or perhaps worse, stay and spread dissatisfaction to their colleagues. As the decision maker, you want to make sure you are doing as much as you can to keep your employees.

Using 10 million aggregated and anonymized company reviews on Indeed, we compared countries, cities and job titles based on the average review scores. What we found is surprising: compensation consistently ranks as the least significant factor when it comes to considering what makes people happy at work. If it’s not compensation, what is it? What can you do as a Small Business owner to help retain employees?

1. Hire passionate people – When I sit down to interview, I want to understand who the person is, what they are passionate about, and how the role they are interviewing for fits with the journey they are on. I am always impressed by candidates that can tell a clear story about who they are and what they are looking to accomplish in their career. Employees can kindle new ideas to bring to their roles, which is why they can be a terrific source of innovation for their organizations.
2. Develop incentive programs – Celebrate your employees! At Indeed, we offer a variety of incentive programs that motivate our employees and help increase employee retention. These can range from bonuses to in-office happy hours and sharing employee wins more broadly. Take it one step further and customize the incentives for each employee. One year we recognized an employee, who is a huge New York sports fan, with tickets to see all of his favorite teams. Show your employees you care by going above and beyond what they would expect.
3. Create content that educates the employee on what it’s like to work for your company – It’s important to make sure that any new employee starting at your company understands what is unique about your company culture. The first place people often learn about your company is in the job description. Make sure yours really draws in the right candidates by explaining what is special about your culture and work environment.
   Are you a small business looking to grow? Then highlight that as an opportunity for long-term growth. Does your company value work-life balance? Then include that in your company bio on your company page. Your job description should accurately depict the culture as well as the responsibilities of the job.

Learn more about leveraging your employer brand on Indeed Company Pages or how to create a compelling job description to entice the right candidate by giving us a call at 1-800-231-3758 from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. Monday-Friday.