In the retail, restaurant and quick service industries, there is a high level of employee turnover that can be hard to avoid. The average gas and convenience store experiences a turnover rate of 59% amongst their employees. Despite the high turnover rate, there are still ways to improve employee retention by investing in your staff.
Starting with the first interaction your managers have with potential employees, they have the opportunity to hire the best people for your organization. Identifying people who are a good fit for your business is the first step to preventing high turnover, but keeping those first-rate employees requires ongoing effort from all teams.
In this blog, we’ll list the top 5 ways to retain great employees:
- Interviews
- Training
- Rewards
- Set up for Success
- Performance Reviews
Interviews
Finding the right talent to work at your business can be challenging. It’s important to remember that it’s not just about what potential employees can offer you, but also what you can offer them. The interview is the perfect opportunity to accurately describe your business to potential employees to ensure that your company values are represented clearly.
People who really want to work for you and are enthusiastic about the opportunities presented and potential within your company will return that same enthusiasm in their job performance. That’s why it’s crucial that your company and the scope of work is correctly presented in the interview.
When employees come on board and their expectations aren’t met or their position changes abruptly, it can cause them to feel discouraged and look for work elsewhere. Outline your goals and values from the get-go and build that strong relationship with your employees from the start.
Training
Training employees is a crucial part of preparing them for their role at your company. This is a great opportunity to mould your staff into the “perfect” employees, while providing them with all the resources they need to learn about your business. Set aside the time needed to provide adequate training for all employees.
Go through the training yourself and ensure that all information is accurate and there aren’t any gaps in your processes. Start slowly and cover all areas until your employees are comfortable with it.
Making sure that training is a priority, and that its importance is clear to your employees can be challenging. You can emphasize this by engaging all new staff and ensuring that they’re involved in the training process. This is everyone’s opportunity - management and employees alike - to respond to any questions that arise and start off on the right foot.
Rewards
When you have all-star employees that you can’t afford to lose, reward them for their good work. Yet somehow, this often gets overlooked, and management forgets to praise employees for how well they’re performing.
One of the leading gas and convenience chains and 2015’s CSP/Intouch Mystery Shop winner, QuikTrip, explains how they have some of the lowest turnover rates in the industry. QuikTrip maintains a turnover rate of only 13% by rewarding employees for good behaviour or top mystery shopping scores. Not only does CEO Chet Cadieux believe in rewarding employees but also trusting and caring for them - this is all part of why he believes QuikTrip is able to retain great employees.
Rewarding and praising good work goes a long way for your employees’ confidence, reinforces their performance, and reassures them of their place and value in your organization. Rewards don’t always need to be monetary - simply just reaffirming your faith in your employees is a step in the right direction. Continued encouragement and reinforcement is what helps employees to keep striving to do better and reminds them that they’re appreciated within your company.
Set up for success
For employees to want to continue working somewhere, they need to feel like there’s opportunities for growth. In order to do their jobs well and improve performance, it’s important for all employees to be set up for success. Ensuring that teams have access to the means required to complete their jobs properly and help with their daily processes is a great way to encourage good job performance. Providing the tools necessary to work an efficient shift falls on management.
Try a mobile form software like IntouchCheck where you can document all processes and create unlimited checklists for your teams to reference. You can track all regular tasks and provide a reminder to employees when things need to get done. Mobile form software also helps all teams do their best work and ensure that your company is efficient and organized. Providing this kind of tool for your teams is an investment that will bring instant results while constantly driving performance.
Performance reviews
Performance reviews shouldn’t be seen as negative or a disciplinary measure. Instead, this is an opportunity to connect with employees and encourage them. Make sure your stellar employees are invested in you by conducting regular performance reviews and providing the chance for them to voice their concerns and offer some guidance.
Those great employees aren’t scared of a performance review; they welcome it and view it as an opportunity to do better and move their way up in your organization. These are the type of people you want to invest in as they make great leaders. Creating and enforcing this dialogue with your employees is crucial to opening the lines of communication and making sure that all your valued employees feel that way, and are given plenty of opportunity for positive feedback.
Conclusion
Save your organization the hassle of constantly having to hire and train new staff due to high turnover rates. Just because it’s common for the retail, restaurant and quick service spaces to experience frequent employee turnover, it doesn’t mean your organization has to. With the proper hiring, training, and staff maintaining processes, you can keep those stellar employees around and groom them into excellent leaders for your organization.
Improve employee retention at your organization in five easy ways:
- Interviews
- Training
- Rewards
- Set up for Success
- Performance Reviews
