Penelope was the perfect employee. She was prompt, patient, and a bit of a perfectionist. Everything that Joe needed in an office manager for his veterinarian clinic. All of the administrative details were off his plate so he could focus on what he was passionate about – treating puppies.

It was perfect. Until a year later when Penelope left for another practice.

Joe was perplexed. He thought Penelope was happy. She fit in with the team and received competitive wages and benefits. What else could be missing?

In a very competitive job market, there’s more to staff retention than just being a good boss and offering competitive wages and benefits.

Here’s a sobering truth in today’s job market: Great people can get another equivalent job every couple of years and get a big raise (think 20%+) for their efforts. No cost-of-living increase can match that.

So how do you keep great employees? You need to be strategic about creating an amazing workplace and engaging them in such a way that money is only one piece of the package.

Let’s dive into some great strategies to increase employee retention.

Before Joe hired his next office manager, he engaged a strategic HR consultant to dive into his business and develop some strategies to improve retention. Let’s dive into the outcomes from that engagement. (oOoOo free consulting, sign me up!!)

Focus on Culture

Culture is more than some values on the wall and a great mission statement. It’s about how the people in your organization connect, behave, and fit in.

Three actions suggested by the consultant to strengthen Joe’s culture include:

• Formalize your culture – go beyond it being word-of-mouth and make it intentional and clear.
• Communicate your values and behaviours through stories constantly. Yes, we mean constantly.
• Create formal and informal ways of recognizing when people are living the culture
• Ensure that every person knows how they contribute to the company’s purpose (we love using impact maps for this)

Develop an 11-Star Employee Experience

In an interview, Brian Chesky, founder of AirBnB explained the concept of creating an 11 star experience. The idea is to think so far beyond a “simple” 5 star experience then scale it down to making “just” an amazing experience.

It’s a powerful exercise in using creativity and removing limitations to transform an experience. Great businesses do exactly this with the employee experience.

The employee journey doesn’t start when on their first day. It starts the moment they walk into your office for their first interview. The experience they have from that first connection is carried through their entire career with you.

What can you do to make them feel special, create connections and get them excited about joining your team?

Constantly Create Connection and Moments

After interviewing Joe’s team, the HR Consultant came back with a typical finding – after onboarding, employees didn’t find they wasn’t much opportunity to connect. They were too busy with “work”.

If you want people to feel special and connected, your 11-star experience shouldn’t end after onboarding.

• Take the time to connect with, and personally get to know, your team members on a regular basis
  • Something as simple as going out for coffee and a casual chat is incredibly powerful!
• Find ways to make them feel special on a regular basis
  • This can be as easy as celebrating birthdays and anniversaries

On one particularly warm day, Joe decided he’d do something nice for his team. He went out in the afternoon and brought back a case of popsicles for his team. They enjoyed them together in the break room (a quick 5 minutes in their busy day) and laughed about childhood memories of enjoying popsicles during the dog-days of summer.

While it seems like “just another nice thing to do”, this created a powerful moment of connection for the team. Moments like these bring your team together far more than just about anything else you can do.

Create Opportunities for Growth

When he saw this section in the HR Consultant’s report, Joe was confused. He ran a small vet. There wasn’t much of a corporate ladder for people to work their way up. How could he create opportunities for growth?

Opportunities for growth doesn’t always mean “moving up” in the organization. Instead, consider it giving members of your team room to grow, be more independent, try new things, and build new skills.

There’s LOTS of new things people can do at a vet clinic. And there’s animals involved, which makes it all the more cuddly for everyone!

With the help of their consultant, Joe talked to each team member to understand what their short and long term career goals were. From there, he could create opportunities for growth for each person based on what they want to do.

Transforming Joe’s Employee Experience

After debriefing with the consultant, Joe was both relieved and perplexed. None of the strategies were about money. They were all about less tangible things, like connection, trust and feeling special. Those were things Joe could do!
Working with both the consultant and his team, they defined the culture for their clinic and created an amazing onboarding experience for new team members.

Joe worked with the consultant and his new office manager (sorry, Penelope wouldn’t change her mind and stay) to brainstorm a list of simple moments and connections he could create.

Being a very busy vet, he had to schedule his impromptu connection times so they remained a priority, but he never missed an opportunity to have a quick coffee and connect with a member of his team.

Those connections meant the team he loved working with were more connected, engaged, and less likely to look elsewhere for new opportunities.