Good staff are hard to find and in today's economic climate even harder to keep. Thermal Electric's Peta Jardine explains how her company works to retain good staff and reward them.
While employees are looking for security and financial stability in uncertain times, many businesses are struggling to compete with larger companies, especially those in the mining industry, to keep good staff.
Staff leave for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional. And this is where exit interviews can be very effective, not only to discover if there is a recurring theme to your staff leaving, but also to identify incentives that could encourage people to stay.
In the current climate, businesses are dealing with a number of threats to their staff, including:
Ageing population: employers are becoming more acutely aware of Australia's ageing population as older workers retire.
Retiring with them (particularly in companies that operate in niche markets) is years of experience and knowledge.
Global financial crisis: while Australia has not been hit as hard as many overseas countries, it still had an impact, causing some staff to look at their income and re-evaluate.
Mining and resources sector: following the effects of the GFC, across the country people are taking off for jobs in 'the mines', where they can often plan to work for a few years on attractively higher wages before returning to their families with enough money to pay off debts.
Most SMEs cannot compete with the wages offered in the mining industry.
Why bother fighting to retain staff if it is too hard to compete? The skills shortage.
We hear about this all the time, from not enough tradies graduating to companies bringing in overseas workers to fill the gap.
Retaining experienced staff is extremely important in niche markets or areas that involve a large amount of specialised knowledge.
Each new hire can involve lengthy training sessions to get them up to speed in even the most basic capacity.
What this means is that during these training periods, you have effectively lost two staff members – the new hire and the experienced staff member training them.
Retaining those staff members equals big time savings.
Thermal Electric (TEE) operates within an extremely specialised industry and products are based on custom design, which means that experience gained over time becomes invaluable.
If, for instance, a senior designer were to leave, it would be years before a new hire could reach the same level of knowledge and experience.
This is why it is an excellent reason to implement constant training and documentation, helping disseminate this knowledge and experience among the team.
Most people think the easiest way to retain staff is to throw money at them, raising wages or offering bonuses.
This is fine for a company with large cash reserves but most SMEs cannot compete in this area.
One of the easiest and quickest ways to encourage your staff to stay is to recognise their efforts and successes.
Research shows that a thank you can be just as effective as a salary hike.
TEE uses a 'Star of the Month' program to help recognise when an employee has made an extra effort with winners receiving a gift voucher.
Giving staff ownership within the company doesn't need to involve stock options or partnerships.
Creating a healthy balance between work and home life is increasingly important for today's workers.
Thermal Electric’s head office is located in Coffs Harbour on the mid-north coast of NSW. The move here from Sydney isn't just about lower running costs, but a change in lifestyle.
Staff enjoy tropical weather, beautiful beaches and surrounding rainforest. TEE doesn't have the resources to lure employees to Coffs Harbour with higher wages, but the company can offer a four-day working week.
There are two shifts in the company – Monday to Thursday and Tuesday to Friday – which means the company itself is still open the full five days a week, yet each employee does their 40 hours in only four days, effectively giving them a long weekend every week.
Since its introduction, sick days have halved and applications for advertised positions have doubled.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peta Jardine is marketing manager at Thermal Electric.
She has a Bachelor of Communication in advertising and marketing from the University of Canberra, as well as a Diploma of Event Management from the University of Technology, Sydney.