Best Practices for employee engagement and retainment for small business

Cardinal Services is a workplace and employment services business based out of St. Helens. Recently, their Business Development Manager, Annie Hughes, spoke at the Rainier Chamber of Commerce monthly meeting to discuss current hiring and employment trends and offer best practices to employers.

“What we've seen and what is kind of happening everywhere is the workforce is changing,” said Hughes. “They have coined that a lot; the great reset for it. It's a convergence of trends that really have reshaped what our workforces look like. The nation's quit rate had been significantly increasing even before Covid happened. So it's now evolving into kind of a broader cultural shift in how employees want to engage with work. So employers had to shift their belief that workers are assets to develop, not cost to contain.”

Hughes discussed overall trends around employee motivations and cited a desire to find jobs that fit with the life they want and what fits best versus taking any job available. The shift to remote work during Covid re-wrote the rules and has forced many employers to adapt and change how they engage with, and retain, employees.

Conversations with local business owners has revealed challenges with recruitment and, especially, retainment of employees causing hardships and sunk costs due to employee churn. Hughes offered a range of advice on interviewing tips, employee onboarding and satisfaction, and creating a positive work culture.

Interviewing tips

Hughes advised against asking the following five key questions during an interview to avoid exposing your company to legal liabilities: “How old are you?” “Are you married,? “Do you have kids?” “What's your religion?” and “Where are you from?” Instead, she advises to focus on skills, experience and qualifications. Hughes also emphasized the importance of training staff who conduct interviews.

“You're going to use questions that will elicit job relevant information, instead of asking if you're married, do you have kids, and how much time do you want to put into a work week,” said Hughes. “Make sure any questions you ask are concise and easily understood. You'll begin those questions with why, what, when, how, and who. Tell me about a time you were proud of your work. Tell me about a time that you were involved in a project that you really grew, or that you expanded, or that you developed the idea on that type of thing.”

Employee onboarding

Hughes emphasized the importance of onboarding when a new employee starts and its importance to have a procedure in place from day one. She suggested providing clear guidelines regarding an organization’s operations structure, culture, mission, vision, and values. Hughes recommends separating paperwork from setting up welcome tours and lunches with leadership and fellow co-workers. She also recommends assigning a mentor to help answer questions during the initial 90-day period to help new employees feel welcomed, connected, and supported from the onset.

“Hiring a new employee is a really expensive and time consuming process,” said Hughes. “About 16 percent of employees quit in their first week and 17 percent leave after the first month. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, it typically costs about $4,425 to hire a new employee, not to mention the 36 days that the average team spends trying to fill that position. Strong onboarding processes can improve your retention rates by 82 percent. If the support isn't there, a lot of times, that's why you're having a person walking out, so onboarding is really essential.”

Employee engagement

Once a business has hired an employee, the challenge can be keeping engagement high. Hughes relayed that Cardinal Services conducts research and surveys to provide insight into what influences overall job satisfaction, and they’ve identified five key areas to integrate into employee best-practices.

The first step is to make sure the employee has a clear job description and defined expectations. Employees thrive on clear direction, feedback, performance expectations, and ongoing communication about what is making them successful at their job. The second is to offer training and tools to ensure they have the resources needed to succeed. "Micromanaging never really goes over well,” said Hughes. “Most people aren't going to thrive in that environment. It increases the quality of employees' performance and productivity when management trusts their workers and values their input on how they might even be able to improve a task.”

The third is appreciation and the importance of recognizing that employees want to know their employer values their work no matter what the job is. Hughes stated that employees are heavily motivated by recognition and suggested employee awards and “public kudos” as an example.

The fourth is offering benefits and, while many small businesses may not be able to offer group health insurance, Hughes recommended alternatives and thinking creatively. “Bonuses and holiday bonuses are a great way to show appreciation but, sometimes, we don't have that in our pocketbook when we're a small business, so smaller gestures matter as well,” Hughes said. “Gift cards or providing a catered lunch that gets your team together for team building is less of a cost than other things. Yearly performance goals for employees that are based on meeting certain benchmark goals can help boost your company's performance and productivity.”

Exit interviews

Last is conducting exit interviews that create an opportunity for the employer to learn from mistakes or re-evaluate how situations have been handled. “Some of the best opportunities for growth come from learning what is not working,” Hughes said. “Some examples of questions in an exit interview might be, ‘Do you feel that you actually received adequate training? Do you feel that you received adequate supervision? Do you feel you received an adequate rate of pay for your required duties?,’ and then asking them to rate different things like the level of pressure from their management… and doing a ‘one low/five high’ so it's easy to put in there…’What is the main reason for you to leave?’”

Hughes recommended using a third party to gather this information. She feels doing so can elicit more honest information when feedback isn’t given to the people who might be part of the reason they’re leaving the workplace. “Given the goal is not a venting session but more we want to hear how we can do better and want to know how we could have altered this approach to have a different outcome here,” said Hughes. “It's really that you want to know how to make it better so you don't have the same situations coming up. These five things aren't expensive to implement, but they do require intentional leadership…one of the best things you can give them is make sure that the people you have in those leadership roles - the trainers and things like that - are invested and working to keep your crew that you've worked so hard to gain.”