The Key to Retaining Top Talent

Published on April 24, 2024

Written / Hosted by: Elizabeth Pettit

When it comes to retaining your best people, often the difference between low and high turnover comes down to employee engagement. This is something that’s influenced by almost every part of a person’s experience in your workplace, whether it’s the way they are rewarded (both extrinsically and intrinsically), communication, meaningful work or even the daily commute. While it’s impossible to avoid attrition altogether, engaged employees are more productive, more loyal and more likely to stay with you in the long run.

Why retention matters?

Hiring the wrong person is costly – not just from a financial perspective, but the impact on your culture and brand can be significant:

Recruitment and training costs – lost time and investment throughout the recruitment and onboarding stages, as well as having to do it all over again to recruit a replacement.
Loss of productivity and morale – are colleagues having to pick up the slack? Bad hires can often create a domino effect, increasing staff turnover as a result.
Brand reputation – if the role is outward-facing, the impact can go beyond the walls of your business, damaging relationships with external stakeholders too.

In most cases, you’ll find the true cost being roughly 3.5x their annual salary. To find out the true cost of your bad hires, use our calculator here.

Creating a culture of engagement

Creating a loyal, engaged workforce means taking proactive steps at every stage of the employee lifecycle… don’t leave it to the exit interview to find out what people really think! It’s worth remembering that employee engagement is a continuous process that can be improved and iterated over time.

Open communication

Transparency. While there’s always certain things that are on a need-to-know basis, promoting open communication throughout your business is critical to employee engagement. Think about how day-to-day announcements and news is shared in your organisation. You’ll probably find that once is never enough for messages to sink in. From people being on leave, or messages going in one ear and out the other – overcommunication is key (e.g. using internal communication tools such as Slack/Teams to reiterate key messages) This becomes even more important during times of change – where anxiety and reluctance to change can easily create barriers for leadership teams.

Feedback loops are also important here. From onboarding to exit, collecting feedback at every stage of the employee lifecycle will help inform you on those areas that are working perfectly, and any aspects of employee experience that need attention. But asking for feedback is only half the battle. Without action, it’s meaningless, so keeping your people engaged in the long-term means ensuring any feedback is analysed and acted upon (within reason). It’s important to note that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. While some will prefer to use 1-1s with managers, others may prefer to vent anonymously through the likes of employee engagement surveys. Don’t forget to check review sites (such as Glassdoor).

Growth opportunities

Growth goes beyond simply moving up the ladder. From the development of new skills to career changes and mentorships, every one of us is on a different journey, each with different wants and needs. For organisations, that means working with your people at an individual level – what do they want to achieve in the next one, two or five years? What’s needed for them to excel in their current or future roles? Is there a case for external training? Asking yourself these questions, and then putting a plan in place is the perfect recipe for helping your people to engage (and excel) in their jobs.

Recognising employee achievements

As humans, a sense of recognition for what we do in our day-to-day roles is only natural. But we’re all motivated in different ways. While some may be motivated by monetary rewards, for most, it’s rarely just about money. Our people want to feel valued and heard – not just from colleagues but leadership too. It all comes down to feedback loops we discussed earlier. What channels could you use internally? From setting up a ‘shoutouts’ channel within your internal communications platform to establishing more structured recognition initiatives, it’s all about highlighting those people who are regularly going above and beyond.

The bottom line

From boosting morale and lower recruitment/training costs, to more internal promotions and stronger customer relationships, the impact of retention goes far beyond just who stays and who goes. To discuss your employee retention strategy or other recruitment advice, have a chat to the PPD Search team – recruitment leaders across the med tech, med device, pharmaceutical and digital health care industries.

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