How to Reduce Turnover and Motivate Employees

Employees leave jobs because they are not satisfied and are basically unhappy. A good manager is observant and knows when the staff is unhappy and immediately attacks the problem. Here are some tips on how you can reduce turnover rate and motivate employees.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Employees
• Manager responsibilities

1. Be sincere.
   
   Your employees are adults and they can tell when you are sincere or not. Astute employees look for patterns of behavior. If they surmise that you are unfair and insincere, that will be the first step to their leaving and looking for other opportunities. Give sincere praise and honest feedback to motivate employees. Take a few minutes to let employees know when they have done a good job. Good feelings come from these acknowledgements and the same good feelings motivate employees to repeat behaviors that bring about compliments and high productivity.

2. Reward unexpectedly.
   
   Show employees you appreciate them by giving unexpected rewards. It is human nature to want and like being appreciated. Employees are no different. I can remember when I had to ask an employee to wear two caps for about 6 months. I needed her skills to speak French and I needed her organizational skills to manage clinical trial records. At the end of the year, I gave her a big bonus. She was not expecting it and the look of surprise also made me feel good. I did the same for each of my deserving employees. In exchange, I got hard working motivated employees and zero turnover.

3. Give acceptable awards.
   
   Do not choose the award for your employees based on what you like or what you want. I can remember a company throwing a golfing outing as a "Thank You" to the employees. Many of the employees did not show up because they did not golf. The choice was not based on what the employees wanted so they didn't feel rewarded at all.

4. Be flexible.
   
   Learn to be flexible. Today's generation is trying to learn how to integrate work and family. Help make that happen. Stop watching the clock and watch production. If the employee is meeting the timeline and producing quality work, reward them with some flexibility on work hours and vacation time when needed.

5. If you follow these few steps, you will reduce turnover rate and motivate employees to do great work that make you look good.

Tips & Warnings

• Treat your employees with respect and you will have earned theirs.
• Implement the Golden Rule and treat employees the way you want to be treated.

Resources

• How to Work Effectively With Men
• How to Honor the History of Labor Day
• How to Pass the Good Clinical Practices (GCP) Certification Exam
• How to Remember and Honor the Heroes of 9-11

[khali321]

on 9/6/2008 good suggestion i will use on my work

[luv2blog]

on 8/30/2008 EB, sounds to me like they need to listen to you. Leave my article laying around where management can see it (smile)

TK, I hear you. It takes a lot of courage to do what you did. My hats off to you! My company still reward us with ice cream and cake. The sad part about it is, they really think they are doing something great. Our last celebration was POPCORN! (lol) And we were suppose to be really impressed because it was on the Oprah Show and she liked it. Like you, I don't even go those things. What difference does it make? They don't care if I'm there or not. Show me the money....that's my motto.

[ebnickiea]

on 8/30/2008 great suggestions. we have high turnover rate at my company and I've been trying to get a reward program started for years

[taskeinc]

on 8/28/2008 your article is on-point .. especially number 3 .. My 20+ years in corporate America with a fortune 500 company, we'd work our butts off and they would reward us with ICE CREAM ... It got to the point where I stopped going to the "celebrations" because they rewarded us like we were children ..