Despite the costly expense of replacing skilled staff, a number of medium-sized companies possess an unbalanced approach when it comes to keeping their employees happy, a new report claims.
Out of 223 managers of mid-sized companies (all boasting a turnover of between £10m to £500m) questioned by KPMG, just 29% said their approach to talent retention was ‘formalised’. On top of this, almost half of all respondents asked – 44% – said their approach was ‘in depth but unorganised, with a variety of concepts yet to be put into action’. An additional 27% stated their approach to retaining staff to be ad-hoc.
When considering how businesses oversee and retain their employees, almost eight out of 10 respondents said they conducted yearly career progress reviews with their workers, while seven out of 10 said they positively encouraged honest and open communication between both line managers and employees. Despite this, results suggest that more in-depth techniques still need to be initiated by employers in the work environment.
Some 49% of companies choose to train managers in how to manage their staff efficiently, whilst 46% boast non-financial staff incentives. On top if this, fewer than 30% entertained capturing and analysing key performance indicators in order to measure talent.
KPMG’s People Powered Performance team Director Ingrid Waterfield revealed that many clients complain that they are in a “war for talent”, yet many lack the approaches to talent retention that are needed.
She added that many processes don’t need to cost a great deal of money, but that they can “really go a long way to improving relationships between companies and their people”.
One important tool available to managers is the exit interview. By employing this technique, companies can pinpoint problems that they may have not be aware of, but once known, can be resolved in order to stop other employees from jumping ship.
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