Retaining your remote employees is getting harder and harder these days. With new companies popping up left and right, the temptation to leave is always rising. This article provides five easy tips to make sure your employees will stay loyal and never be tempted to leave your team.
Hiring employees who live and work outside of your immediate area can bring you a vast amount of skilled labor, but managing a remote workforce can become difficult. Remote employees often need additional reinforcement to feel attached to their position because of the distance and lack of a tangible office.
For the leaders and managers at your company, this means putting in the extra effort to make sure your top talent has every reason to stick around. While pre-screening your employees for potential staying power is always a good idea, the experience they have working for your company will determine whether or not they stay.
Here are five tips you can use to turn your new hires in long term members of your team.
Conduct Regular Stay Interviews
You already know what an exit interview is, and you can prevent those by regularly conducting a stay interview. In this type of interview, rather than hearing about problems after the fact, you head the problem off before it becomes a reason to leave. Some questions you should ask in a stay interview include:
- Why did you want to join this company?
- What makes you stay here?
- What would it take to make you leave?
- Is there anything you would change or improve about this company?
Focus on Developing Your Employees
If you can make your employees feel like their personal goals and aspirations are just as important as the work they do for you, they will treat your goals with the same devotion as their own. When made to feel like they aren’t just a gear in a machine, your remote workers will have higher morale and higher productivity. Ask your employees what skills they would like to develop and how you can help develop them.
Patrick Christensen, President at Horizon Retail Construction says, “We set the standard high, and it all starts with the leadership. We’re recruiting leadership skills, soft skills, personal skills, and we’re laying in training on technical skills. We’ve been very successful with that.”
Facilitate Open Communication
Don’t be the strict parent who punishes their children when they tell the truth, instead be the cool uncle who they can tell anything! If your employees feel like they can be completely honest with you, and know they can count on you for the same, over time you will see their bond with you and your company deepen. Make it well known that you are open to anything that they have to say, and there’s no question too dumb to ask.
Make Your Expectations Crystal Clear
Make it clear exactly what you want from your employees. If your remote workers are confused by their objectives they will lose focus, and productivity will suffer. Provide clear direction and regular (but not too regular) check-ins so they can feel like they are part of the team and not falling through the cracks. Let them know their importance on your team and that they understand their role.
“I would make sure the job role, job description, criteria for advancement is very laid out. The way I do it today is I have this two weeks of on boarding which is training by the hour. Then it rolls into training topics by the week. Then it rolls into core competencies after ninety days for the rest of your life. Then it rolls into how do you get promoted,” says Christensen.
Develop a Solid Onboarding Process
With a strong, concise onboarding process your remote employees will instantly feel like part of the team and will be excited to start learning about your system. Create 30, 60, and 90 day plans that set clear expectations, and introduce them to all the necessary people, accounts, and documents they will need in order to get up to speed. Make sure you have projects lined up for them to take on. Done properly, a good onboarding process can foster a sense of excitement that will last long after they’ve passed the initiation phase.
Keeping your remote employees around long-term is something that many companies around the world struggle to do, but it’s very doable if you take the right steps. Follow these five tips to the letter and you will have rival companies asking you for tips on remote employee retention in no time.