How to Increase Remote Employee Retention

Key Takeaways:

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•  Holding onto remote employees can be challenging, but losing them can be costly so it’s in your interest to focus on retention.
  
  
•  Invest in your virtual work culture with the right remote work systems to create the kind of virtual environment employees want to be involved in.
  
  
•  Recognize and reward good work so employees feel that they’re making meaningful contributions.
  
  

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Read time: 6 minutes

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Employees leave their jobs. 

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Regardless of if you operate a remote or a traditional company if you don’t take an active role in retaining your employees, they will likely leave. If you want your company to be successful, you need to retain your top talent. However, many companies do not know how to do it properly.
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By keeping your top talent with your company for longer, you increase the sales of your products and services, significantly improve customer satisfaction, your employees are happier and more satisfied, and you can make more precise succession plans.
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Failing to retain a key employee with your company could be costly for your company, both in a financial and organizational sense. Studies show that replacing an individual employee costs almost times the annual salary of that employee.
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All of this may sound scary, but there are still ways you can retain your employees, such as tracking activity and highlighting opportunities for professional development with employee monitoring software available with a free trial such as Insightful.
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Today, we will be exploring some of the ways you can do that.

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Strengthen Your Remote Culture

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In a remote environment, the location is not an essential determiner of a remote company's success. What is critical for building a thriving remote company culture that will positively affect employees and improve your retention are careful planning, great leadership, and a bit of foresight.

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Great remote company culture starts with the hiring process. If you want to attract and keep top talent, you need to be upfront about your company's work. Put in the front what makes your company unique and what the skills are that your employees already possess. 

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It would help if you showed that you have high expectations for employees. This will weed out all those prospects not interested in working for a company like yours, which will significantly help in the later stages of hiring and employment. By being open about what you are looking for, you also help potential prospects figure out whether their particular style of working suits your business.

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To strengthen your remote company culture, you need to foster a sense of community. 

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There are various ways you can do this, such as:

• Hosting virtual team events: While they may seem cheesy, virtual team events can bring your remote employees closer together. Whether it’s a weekly quiz night on Zoom, an online escape room event, or a problem-solving party room, the goal is to encourage teamwork and help employees open up to one another.

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• Creating casual chat rooms: Loneliness is a very real byproduct of the isolation that many remote employees experience. Having someone to talk to, even if it is via a computer screen, can be hugely helpful in restoring spirits. Casual chat rooms on Zoom or channels in Slack can be a great way to encourage this low-stakes conversation.

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• Encouraging success sharing: A hallmark of any effective remote company culture is the ability to celebrate one another’s success. After all, without a centralized hub, there can be no casual ‘congratulations’ in the hallway or recognition of a coworker’s success. Find creative ways to recognize great individual and collective effort.
  
  

You can also implement remote employee monitoring software to create a culture of individual and collective accountability. This can help employees feel as if they can make strides toward their professional goals and ambitions and be appropriately recognized for their productive actions.

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Create a Mentorship Program

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Mentorship is essential for all employees, but especially remote ones. Mentorship programs are an excellent way to build a sense of belonging and collective accomplishments, as only teams invested in helping their team succeed are teams in it for the long run.

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By introducing a mentorship program in your company, you will have more engaged and supported employees. Make sure you reward those employees who will mentor their teammates. Provide them with all the necessary resources to mentor their colleagues effectively. 

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Pair new employees with seasoned ones, and if possible, create platforms that facilitate shared work experiences to encourage knowledge transfer.

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Offer Flexible Work Arrangements

Perks are a huge part of why employees stay with a company or leave it. Studies even show that a majority of employees would instead pick better benefits over a pay rise. If you want your employees to stay with you for longer, you need to pay attention to what they want. 

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Flexible working is one of the top demands for all workers, remote or not. It can improve the motivation, performance, and engagement of your employees, leading to better company loyalty and employee retention.

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If you want to create a more flexible workforce, you need to prioritize frequent communication and meaningful check-ins. You also need to trust your employees and focus on the result instead of the hours they spent working.

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Recognize and Reward Great Work

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One of the best ways to keep employees longer with your company is to follow their progress and reward them when they achieve specific goals. 

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By knowing how to monitor work from home employees, you will be able to follow their progress on projects and tasks. Knowing how to monitor work from home employees will also be useful in following through with their goals.

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To recognize outstanding goals and high-performing employees, you first need to have clear performance markers. By rewarding those employees who deliver and even over-deliver on their individual goals, you will create an environment of constant growth in your company. 

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This will help employees feel more valued and should keep them longer with your company. The rewards you give to your employees can include everything from gift cards, dinner coupons, to even additional vacation days, depending on how serious you are about the performance markers.

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Encourage Regular Feedback 

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It may be a tired expression, but ‘the customer is always right’ rings true in many ways.

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It’s often the companies that find ways to solve the real problems their customers are facing that prove most successful. Instead of those that ignore customer issues and only hear their own ideas for growth.

You can observe a similar phenomenon in the workplace, where the customer is replaced by the employee.

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Rather than keeping strategic discussions at the manager level and above, invite input from all levels of your organization. Not only can you gain insight into things your employees might have seen that others have missed, but you’ll also incentivize them to pay more attention to the strategy behind their daily actions at work.

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By starting a continuous feedback loop you can create a culture of ideas-sharing and cross-functional collaboration which should benefit everyone in your company.

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Here are a few ways you can do that:

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•  One-on-one virtual meetings - sometimes it’s best to get employees in a virtual room one at a time so you can get unedited responses and ask open-ended questions.
  
  
•  Remote video conferences - a round-the-table style conversation can be a good casual way of extracting employee feedback and reaching consensus.
  
  
•  Anonymous online surveys - sending out online surveys that your employees can fill out anonymously is an effective way of getting detailed feedback.

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However you decide to collect employee feedback, make sure you promote an open-door policy as this can give even the quiet employees a chance to have their say.

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Promote Career Development

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Most employees want to feel a sense of purpose in their work. They want to know that it’s possible to ascend the career ladder and realize their professional potential.

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If they feel as if they’re in a workplace that’s stunting their professional growth and stifling their ambition, what’s their incentive to stick around?

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To improve your retention rate, it’s in your interest to offer viable pathways to professional development for your employees. By showing them the career development opportunities on offer in their current workplace, they’re less likely to look elsewhere for the chance to shine.

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Career development doesn’t have to be a huge resource drain, either.

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Here are some great ways to promote career development in your remote setup:

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•  Online courses - Online courses are ubiquitous these days, and there’s a course on just about every soft and hard skill you can think of. Plus, you have the luxury of deciding whether to produce them in-house or find existing online courses to present to your remote employees.

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•  Educational platforms - Sometimes it helps to have an online educational platform that remote employees can access whenever they feel the urge to flex their ambition. Instructure is an example of an online educational hub that employees can use to hone their skills.

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•  Networking opportunities - While it may seem more appropriate for those actively seeking work, networking can also be a great way to offer professional development to remote employees. Either host your own networking functions to encourage employees to meet and talk business, or suggest nearby events employees can attend.

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Boost your Retention Rate

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If you want to keep your employees working for your company, you often need to revisit your employee retention strategy at least once a year. You need to continually update your practice and keep up with the latest trends in developing a positive workplace culture that will attract and retain top talent.

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No matter what you do, keep in mind that for better employee retention, your employees and their needs and wishes have to come before anything else.

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Updated on December 27th, 2024