The Secrets of Staff Retention - CareforKids.com.au®

The Secrets of Staff Retention
Tips to avoid the high cost of recruitment and build team morale

The key to attracting and retaining good staff is to introduce a range of strategies designed to foster a sense of self worth and success in employees. In the high turnover environment of the child care sector it is worth doing all you can to hold on to high quality staff to avoid the high costs of recruitment and to build good team morale.

The following strategies will help you create a positive culture in your workplace and more importantly, encourage your number one asset; your people, to stick around:

Conduct an Induction
A candidate which impresses you during a recruitment round is also likely to have impressed another employer. If your organisation is lucky enough to secure their services then make sure you create a great first impression by conducting a thorough and well delivered induction.

Take the time to introduce new staff members to their colleagues, show them the premises and where they can leave their belongings. If necessary ensure any IT infrastructure is in place and make sure you have all the paperwork ready to ensure they receive their pay on time.

Take some time on the first day to sit down with your new recruit to discuss the strategic goals of the organisation and how they fit into the organisational structure.

Many new recruits leave within the first days or weeks of taking up a new position, creating a positive first impression will help you reduce the chance of this happening.

Performance Management
Performance management is simply the practice of introducing a range of goals and objectives for your staff and monitoring and measuring their performance against those goals on a regular basis.

Developing and introducing a performance management system for employees can decrease poor performance and give employees a reason to maintain or even improve their good performance.

Ensuring staff and managers have regular meetings can also help you attract high quality staff and ensure you keep hold of them by stimulating feedback and positive communication.

A performance management plan sets out the performance targets or key performance indicators for employees and explains how performance will be measured against those targets.

To be truly effective a performance management plan should:

Be aligned with the strategic and business goals of the organisation
Describe the agreed performance management process
Describe the agreed performance targets
Enable you to objectively measure an employee’s performance against those targets
Provide real benefits for both the employee and the employer
Allow for regular meetings and a two-way flow of communication

A carefully designed and consistently applied performance management plan will help you hold on to staff members by ensuring they clearly understand what is expected of them. It will also give you, the manager, a document you can use to discuss both the positive and negative aspects of an employee’s performance and a tool for discussing the potential for pay increases and/or promotion.

Performance management systems may also promote feelings of job satisfaction and loyalty towards an employer and may boost productivity by creating an environment where employees feel as though their work is recognised and valued.

For under performers it can be a helpful way of identifying areas of weakness early and implementing a plan to address those areas before the problem gets too big to do anything about. Providing employees with an opportunity to explain themselves and involving them in an action plan to address the problem areas can also be a very productive exercise.

Career Planning
Developing and introducing career planning strategies in your workplace is a great way of holding onto staff as it sends a strong message that you support their professional development and promotion within the organisation.

Taking the time to devise a realistic and achievable career plan for your staff members will give them a clear goal to work toward, will encourage them to stay, especially if there is a possibility of additional training and will significantly boost job satisfaction.

Conducting a career planning session with team members will ensure your staff members understand:

What they need to achieve in terms of training, further education and on the job experience to be promoted within the organisation.
What type of work they are best suited towards and what their current and future career interests are.
The quickest and most effective way of reaching their career objectives.

Many employees make career decisions quickly without thinking too much about the future and encouraging discussion about the opportunities will improve focus, determination and drive.

It will also ensure you hold onto key staff members by helping keep them professionally satisfied and stimulated and working towards mutual goals which ultimately will assist the organisation as much as the individual employee.

It might be helpful to conduct career planning sessions at the same time as performance management meetings so employees gain a clear picture of how their current performance affects their future opportunities.

Flexible Work Practices
Flexible workplaces allow employers and employees to work out terms and conditions of employment which serve both the operating needs of the business and the personal commitments of the employee.

Because the nature of child care work is very much location based, flexible work practices in this sector usually revolve around the hours of work including possibilities for part time work, job share and varying start and finish times.

The many benefits of introducing flexible work practices include:

It will give your organisation a competitive edge during the recruitment process for candidates seeking a better work/life balance.
It will improve communication and trust in the workplace by allowing employees to meet their other commitments. This should also reduce sick days and absenteeism.
It can foster a sense of loyalty and will encourage teams to work together to work out rosters which suit everyone’s time constraints.
It can help managers plan and staff for peaks and troughs in workload.
It is an extremely cost effective way of boosting team morale and productivity.
Encourages managers to look for creative ways to work.

Introducing flexible work practices in an organisation requires managers to spend time with staff discussing alternative working arrangements. The process will be easier if managers are willing to 'think outside the box' to develop and introduce strategies which keep most people if not everyone happy.

A small amount of time spent brainstorming with staff to identify shared goals and objectives will pay enormous dividends for managers leading happy, productive and focused teams.

Introducing some of the simple, cost effective methods described above should help you keep hold of your people in this current, extremely competitive recruitment market.

This article was proudly sponsored by ChildcareJobs.com.au

dedicated to supporting the Child Care Industry and
finding child care professionals a better job.