The Techies in Your Team Are Looking To Jump Ship, Here's How You Can Retain Them

Hiring the right people and creating a strong team is not an easy task. You spend a lot of time, effort, as well as money in the recruitment process, and go out of your way to gather the best of the best under your banner. However, if there is a challenge bigger than hiring employees, it is to retain them. When it comes to the IT industry, things are even more difficult because employees with the best technical skills are in high demand and the turnover rate for technologists is through the roof ­– 13% to be exact. If you are a small set up, you are competing against giants like Apple and Google, so keeping your techies inspired enough to stay can be a big challenge. So, what do you do when your employees want to be set free? Here is what you are supposed to do:

Don’t Lose Track of What’s Important

Yes, money is important, but when it comes to retaining technical talent, the wage is not the most important factor. What is important to people is staying competitive with compensation. Don’t believe what we are saying? According to a Glassdoor survey, 52% engineers would want to opt for a job with less salary but great culture. Your main aim should be to attract people who understand your company’s vision, mission, as well as the core values. They should stay back because they feel a part of the organization and not just because they are receiving a steady paycheck.

Give Them a Sense of Independence

You need to provide a sense of independence to your technicians. Make sure that you make them important stakeholders in every decision be it product or service related. When you have an appreciative culture at work, your employees feel like they belong there and this is what encourages them to stay. It is important you know that technical issues will keep coming up, but it is your job to not lose your cool at the technicians. Always learn from the past and allow your employees to come up with the solution.

Hold On To Your Uniqueness

You need to know what sets you apart as an organization and use it for recruiting as well retaining your best employees. It is important you know that this won’t help you hire everyone but it will help you assemble the right team. What you need to do is find out what makes you a great company and use that to sell yourself to prospective employees.

Offer Educational Opportunities

You need to give your employees different opportunities to grow. One of the best ways to go about is to use IT skills training services and invest in employee skills development. When you put in the effort to educate your employees, you are making a win-win deal because your employees would apply all that they learn in the organization and they would know that you care for them and want to invest in their future. You want to make sure that you keep the best people on your team and this is one tactic to retain them and upskill them at the same time.

Be Selective When Hiring

One mistake that companies make while hiring people is that they hire anyone who fits the criteria. Yes, fitting the criteria is important but you need to get people who are a good cultural fit for your company, as they are more likely to stick with you.

It is recommended that you opt for people from diverse backgrounds and experience when hiring. You don’t want technicians that just know the latest technology. You want people that know what they are doing and have the curiosity to learn more. You should know that techies are curious by nature, so hiring people that have a passion to grow will work in your favor.

Offer Them Training

You would know that everyone wants advancement in their career. Did you know that 76% engineers would leave their job if they had no opportunities for growth? Online training, either through self-paced courses or via virtual classrooms gives techies a chance to learn what is happening around them.

In addition to instructor led online training, you need to create career ladders for the employees that shares minimum requirements for every level of a job. If there are employees that are interested in management, they need to know exactly what they can do to rise to a leadership role in your organization.

Have Stay Interviews

If an employee resigns, you do exit interviews to learn why they are leaving. In addition to this, you need to do stay interviews with long-tenured employees to ask them why they are staying and what are some of the issues that may prompt them to leave. Use all the information that you gather to make your employment retention strategies better.

Communicate With Them

You need to regularly communicate with the employees so that they can freely communicate about whatever is bothering them or if they have any new ideas.

Have a Human Resource Department

An organization can’t be successful if they don’t consider their employees to be their biggest asset. Even if you are a small sized company, you need to hire an HR director who would work towards streamlining processes related to the employees.

Make Your Expectations Clear

You need to tell your employees what you expect from them and set their goals accordingly. This may seem pretty basic, but there are employees who don’t even know what is expected from them.

Try to Promote From Within

Promoting employees from within gives them a sense of advancement. If you always hire from outside, it will give them the impression that they don’t have a future in the company.

Offer Them Small Perks

Offer them small treats like ice creams or cupcakes every once in a while. This may seem very insignificant to the management but it will help in keeping your employees motivated.