"What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
We have been reviewing many great tips on decreasing staff turnover. I hope you have tried some of them! As a reminder, ways to improve your work culture and keep your staff working with you include:
Hiring the right people
Keeping up with the market rate and offering competitive salaries and total compensation,
Closely monitoring toxic employees and having a process to deal with them
Rewarding and recognizing employees
Offering flexibility
Prioritizing your staffs' work-life balance
Paying attention to employee engagement
Defining and developing your workplace culture
Decreasing your staff turnover takes creativity, timely communication, and sound processes. This week, keep these valuable tips where you can see them. Put them on your phone, in your appointment book, or on your computer. These tips are crucial for decreasing staff turnover.
This past week, I started a new process to recognize the physiotherapists in my clinic (tip number 4). After their assessment, each patient can rate their physiotherapist, and evaluation, on a scale of one to five. This week, I saw that one of our Physiotherapists had four ratings, each of which was a five out of five. I sent her an email to congratulate her. I made sure to put in the subject line "Congratulations on your reviews" and not just "Your reviews" so she would not worry it was a negative issue when she opened my email. She emailed me back to express her thanks. I regularly checked the ratings but had not always provided feedback and acknowledgment. I have now started to do so!
Two more tips to add to your list of ways to decrease staff turnover include standardizing performance reviews and allowing development and continuing education opportunities. Please read below and determine if these are areas you can further develop.
1. Standardizing performance reviews.
Just because things have always been done a certain way does not mean they need to continue that way. So often, we think of the annual performance review. If you are only doing one a year and not communicating well with your staff, you are at risk of high turnover. In addition, there is often a focus on what the employee should be improving on. Did you know, according to Gallup, about 80% of people who felt criticized or unmotivated after a performance review started to look for a new job? I have certainly changed my performance reviews over the years. Now, it is more of a discussion of how they can improve the business and how they can improve their skills. Any constructive feedback should never be a surprise to your staff member. Regular communication about issues that arise, negative and positive, will limit this from happening. Make sure you have your metrics ready and discuss how they are doing and what you can do to help them improve. Do all you can to make it a collaborative process in that there is valuable communication between the employer and employee.
A Good Tip: If you do not already have a template for these reviews and/or a process for formal and informal meetings, what can you start doing this week to establish these?
2. Allow opportunities for development and continuing education.
When staff take courses, there is a noticeable "uplift" in the clinic as they try something new to improve their patients' health and share new knowledge with others. In addition to courses, it could also be regular research reviews or practical demonstrations of new skills. Think seriously about an education allowance for employees if you do not already have one. Ensure your performance reviews include input from the employee about what educational activities they would benefit from.
A Good Tip: What can you do this week to discover what further education and development your staff may be interested in pursuing? And have a discussion on how that fits into the organization's goals. Don't automatically discard any ideas. Pursue them to see if they can benefit the employee and the organization.
You may have noticed a theme for each of these ten tips - for each is an example of taking your faith to work by taking Micah 6:8 with you. They are under the category of "doing justice" (doing the right thing) and/or "loving-kindness" (doing the right thing in a kind and gracious manner). Pray for your business every day and ask God to humbly give you wisdom as you make decisions and care for your team, and put these tips into practice!
May God richly bless you this week as you consciously consider your work culture.
Have a great week!
Bonny, Christian Women at Work
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