At Incentive Solutions we know that to be successful in your market, you’ve got to attract, train and retain valuable and talented employees. If you do this well, you’ll continue to grow. If you don’t do this well…you need to learn how to because without good employees you’re destined to fail.
It’s crucial to your success that employee retention of good employees is high.
In fact, a recent survey of HR managers revealed that 56% of managers believe employee retention is their number one priority. However, the problem is that almost 40% of these managers lack actual processes, such as an employee recognition program or rules and office procedures to match the modern day employee’s needs, to maintain good employee retention numbers. This inability to produce engagement is costing a large number of companies a lot of money. In fact, disengaged employees spend almost two to four hours a day not working, costing you half of the money you pay them in lost productivity.
Thankfully, there’s a new (to some managers) technology that makes employee engagement, employee retention, and employee recognition much easier than in years past, even if your workforce is spread out beyond one central location.
The technology? Social media.
If your company can figure out how to use social media to its advantage, then employee retention, employee engagement and employee recognition will become a much easier task for you to handle. Here are some tips we’ve found to be great helpers toward using social media to boost your employee engagement, retention, and recognition levels.
Allow It – This may be hard for some managers, but you need to just go ahead and embrace change, because social media isn’t going anywhere because it’s ingrained into the life of the modern employee. In fact, embracing it can turn out to be your best friend if you encourage your employees to use it for the benefit of the company. Their tweeting and sharing can provide valuable word of mouth marketing, SEO value, and brand awareness of your company that you had to pay thousands of dollars for before.
Talk It Out – You need to use social media as well. Put some of your company’s ideas and targets out into the social sphere and allow your employees, fans and clients to engage one another in your interests, discussing different aspects of your business while becoming engaged through the process.
Blogging – Your employees are going to blog, share, and post regardless of what you do. So why not create a network that links to some of your employees’ blogs, or even have a featured blog on your homepage where you express pride in those who work for you. This may even create competition between employees to see who can get their blog featured month after month. Blogs Directory
Location, Location – Utilize things like check-ins and foursquare to your advantage. Set up employee meet ups, lunches and dinners, and advise them to check in and invite friends. This will show them that you’re a company who’s invested in more than just their work lives, and will make you a much more desirable place to work.
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Recognize Employees Online – Use social media as one of the backbones of your employee recognition program and recognize them through your various social media outlets. Who doesn’t want all of their friends to see on their Facebook and their Twitter that they’re the employee of the year? This is huge for boosting employee retention in the modern age.
Reward Social Engagement – Build an incentive program around social media engagement. Your employees, who are going onto social media anyways, will now be encouraged, recognized, and rewarded to do so while also promoting and speaking on behalf of your company. It’s the true definition of “taking the bull by the horns” and making the problem work for you.
We’ve been creating employee recognition programs that help boost employee retention and engagement for decades. It’s what we do. If you’d like to learn more about our programs and how you can build them around emerging technologies such as social media, call us today at 1-866-567-7432.
