Getting hold of good employees and keeping them around has always been a challenge, but it’s become even more of an issue recently. Turnover creates a horrendous burden on a company nowadays – one that businesses can ill afford in times of trial. To have any chance of lasting success, businesses need to double down on retaining valuable workers – here’s how.

Ensure Workforce Quality

A business’s success is directly related to the quality of its employees. Therefore, it stands to reason that ensuring that only good workers can get on board should be a top priority for companies. The most reliable way to do so is to perform thorough background checks on all applicants for any position in the company, using a DBS checks service such as uCheck.

The benefit of quality control at an early stage in the hiring process is two-fold. 

It’s an unfortunate fact that the majority of applicants tend to present exaggerated, misleading, or even outright false information in their CVs. Doing a thorough check on a candidate before giving them a position ensures that a business doesn’t hire someone negligently. Checking the qualifications of the person you’re hiring is critical, as an unqualified individual may cause a staggering amount of damage if they mess things up. 

There is another benefit of performing a thorough background check that directly pertains to worker retention. Checking the official data on promising applicants allows you to analyze a detailed record of their work history from a whole other angle, which can paint a picture that’s completely different than the one outlined in their CV. 

Notably, even though a CV may be deliberately obfuscated to try and hide an applicant’s job-hopping tendencies, the official records present a clear picture of the matter.

There’s a whole discussion to be had about workers changing employment regularly, and whether it’s good or bad from the perspective of the employer and the employee. The fact of the matter is that the practice used to be a lot less prevalent in previous decades in generations than it is now, and the stigma surrounding it is disappearing as time goes on.

As usual, it’s up to each business to decide whether or not they’re OK with that practice. Some businesses are fine with getting workers on board for a while, letting them work on a project or two well, then parting ways and looking for new deckhands. Other companies are looking for loyal employees that are in it for the long haul. Whatever the case may be, the company has the right to know what sort of individual it lets on board.

Long story short, background checks are crucial for employee retention. Performing them is not discriminatory, and does not violate the applicant’s rights. They are a common practice that ensures the company doesn’t need to let go of unqualified workers, and that habitually disloyal individuals don’t get on board just to jump ship on a whim.

Inspire Loyalty

Loyalty is something that’s difficult to quantify, or even describe accurately when it comes to business. Everyone seems to have a different concept of it, and there is no one established universal way of incorporating it in your business process. Regardless, loyalty is a key factor for maintaining a good atmosphere and retaining workers – and it seems like in the current climate, it is in short supply.

Companies that want to reduce turnover should really take the time to consider what they can do to inspire loyalty in their workers. In some cases, it could be enough to ensure that the lines of communication between individuals and systems within the company are well developed and maintained. Doing so can be a challenge in a remote environment, but it could be achieved with the right application of technology and ingenuity. In other instances, the company may need to take other steps to improve worker dedication.

Collect Feedback and Consider it

Companies would do well to remember that collecting feedback and analyzing it is not only crucial for improving their relationship with their customers, their product, and their process. Collecting feedback from employees, analyzing it, and incorporating it into your vision for the company is a good way to ensure worker satisfaction, which in turn is crucial for worker retention.

Naturally, it’s up to companies how they collect, analyze and interpret said feedback, and how they act on it. However, there is little doubt that the pressures of day-to-day life in our current stressful situation are taking a toll on everyone – and workers are feeling the brunt of it. The only way forward for companies who want to retain a good relationship with their employees is to introduce empathy, care, and consideration for the individual into company policy. 

Improve Your Business Process

Making sure that your company actually runs well is one of the cornerstones of maintaining a stable workforce. The logic behind this is simple – if your working process is subpar, employees will have trouble performing their duties. This creates fertile soil for feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness, and disenfranchisement that can quickly bloom into resentment. Once an employee gets to that point, retaining them as a useful worker becomes problematic, to say the least.

Companies can make sure that they don’t enter this death spiral by taking steps to clean up their business process. Мake sure everything runs as smoothly as possible, and if you do a good enough job you shouldn’t experience morale drops that lead to turnover.