How retaining talent is key for business productivity

Productivity has always been an inevitable top priority for organisations of every kind. Whether you’re in the private sector striving to meet your growth targets, or a charity where productivity can indicate how much your mission has been furthered, productivity is a buzzword and key people metric. Achieving high productivity is essential for the success of any organisation. 

Yet, despite this, many don’t understand the profound relationship business productivity has with retaining talent and the processes behind that. Sometimes, organisations have the mindset of replacing any churned employees with new talent, believing this will have no significant impact on productivity. But, as any HR leader will be able to tell you, this simply isn’t the case.

On average, it can take a new hire one to two years to reach the productivity of an existing employee. Not to mention the impact a high churn rate can have on employee morale, culture, and burnout for your remaining workforce, all ultimately circling back to productivity. Keep reading to learn exactly how this plays out.

Retaining Talent is Cost & Time Effective

The monetary costs and amount of time spent on recruitment can be steep, especially if your organisation develops a pattern of poor employee retention which can impact your reputation and employer brand. Background checks, employers’ liability insurance, and candidate screening are all crucial spends, but this doesn’t even consider the cost of an employee’s absence or the time it takes for the new employee to reach a good productivity level.

You might be interested to read: How the xcd people platform saves time and improves efficiency

Retention Supports Company Culture

Many organisations find themselves tempted to simply hand over the workload of churned employees to existing employees, a practice that has existed for decades but was only recently dubbed by the internet as ‘quiet hiring’. But the risk this poses for burnout cannot be understated, with a hefty workload listed as one of the leading causes of employee burnout. This affects the work environment and overall productivity. 

It only follows that this then takes a toll on the employee’s wellbeing, impacting their productivity, and putting them at higher risk of churn themselves. This can have a detrimental impact on your culture, as employees with specific knowledge, skills, and personalities that have fed positively into your organisation leave.

Employee Retention is Linked to Customer Satisfaction

The key to retainment is employee engagement, and often engaged employees are miles more productive and provide a high-quality experience for customers. 

For example, employees who are keen to develop and grow in their career may be engaged and retained by offering a clear learning and development path for them and providing them the opportunity to upskill in areas where they have expressed interest. This allows them to pick up valuable experiences that informs and improves the work they provide for customers. Ensuring recognition is given where due, that line managers are equipped with strong people skills, and your compensation is fair will also contribute to engaging employees and therefore boosting productivity and retention.

We break down the details of this in our other article: Why employee experience is just as important as customer experience

How should your workplace technology be supporting retention?

Self-service

94% of employees say that poor workplace technology makes them want to quit their jobs. From booking leave to finding information, robust HR technology should remove bottlenecks and simplify the everyday processes people go through to ensure their experience is positive.

Development

Your HR solution should ensure employee’s learning and performance is not just a footnote add-on but a fully fleshed out module. Encouraging a proactive learner mentality among your workforce will be crucial to encouraging upskilling, sustained productivity, and ultimately retention. A single solution should also enable the results of performance management and employee development to be easily displayed in reports and executive level dashboards so that leadership can see the impact of various initiatives on productivity and retention.

Learn how you can future-proof your talent with xcd’s learning and development module.

Holistic View

Any HR technology that offers a full understanding of your employee’s productivity and retention – and the relationship between them – will enable users a holistic view of their organisation. This means data at your fingertips reflecting every area of the workforce, from sickness and pay to demographics and performance. 

This allows your HR teams to track not just stand-alone metrics but also identify patterns. For example, you may notice that while your organisation has productive, well retained managers, you struggle to hold on to talented junior staff. Whether it’s poor compensation, different working patterns, or lack of proper onboarding, this can enable your business to pinpoint the area you need to work on to improve retention and productivity.

All kinds of emerging workplace trends have business leaders re-thinking the norms and worried about the productivity of their people. You may be interested to read: How the Four Day Work Week Will Impact Productivity

To ensure top performers are recognised and retained, having performance data at your finger tips is key. Learn about the xcd solution’s performance module with our free download.