Employee Retention for Small Business Owners

March 22, 2008 By Mary White

Your small business has grown and you’ve hired your first employees. That’s a major milestone for any entrepreneur. Now that you have people on your team, you have to figure out how to keep them. Employee retention is an important consideration for any small business owner. The last thing you want to do is spend your valuable time training a new employee only to have him or her leave your company, leaving you to hire and train someone else.

Staffing Considerations
Effective employee retention starts with making sure you hire the right people. When you’re getting ready to start looking for employees, you need to think about retention issues. From a staffing perspective, it’s important to have a clear idea of what skills and abilities the person you hire needs to have. When interviewing people, carefully question to determine if those skills are present, along with the right attitude and personality to be a good fit for your organization.

Many managers make the mistake of hiring the people with the best credentials for the job. However, the candidates with the best credentials is often not the best choice. If you hire someone who is overqualified for the entry level position you have to offer, it’s very likely that you’ll lose that individual as soon as another opportunity presents itself. Look for the person with the skills you need, the right attitude, a desire to grow with a small business, and who is a good fit. That’s the person you’re likely to keep.

Training Considerations
Once you hire new employees, it’s vital to make sure to provide proper orientation and training to them. You can’t expect even people with experience in your field to come to your company knowing exactly what it is you want them to do. The vast majority of people really want to do a good job. As the manager, it’s up to you to make sure your employees know what is expected of them and that they know how to perform the tasks that you need them to do.

Management Considerations
The number one reason good employees leave their jobs is because they work for poor managers. As a small business owner, you have to wear many hats. Once you start adding employees to your team, you have to become a supervisor/leader/manager/coach/mentor.

Employees respect managers who listen to them, communicate openly, are able to make decisions, and whose actions are consistent with their words. To keep your employees, it’s important to be the type of manager who provides them with the guidance and feedback they need, and who is someone they can respect and admire.

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