How to Convert Middle-of-the-Pack Employees Into Brand Ambassadors

Our Employee Engagement Report found a hidden turnover risk — employees who are neither fully engaged nor disengaged. They fly under the radar, but they’d easily leave your company for a small pay bump elsewhere. With the job market improving, according to a Gallup poll, employees have more options and are willing to search for the best deal.

How do you entice these employees to stay? The better question might be how do you make them the kind of employees who love working at your company and are ready to stay for the long term.

Costs of Turnover

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Let’s first establish why you want these employees to commit. The cost of turnover is high both financially and in terms of institutional knowledge. According to an article by Inc. magazine, turnover costs can run as high as 150% of annual salary. Recruiting, interviewing, and training new employees cost you time and money.

Beyond that, you’ll lose someone who knows the ropes at your company and is already competent at doing the job. The next person won’t accomplish that level of productivity for a while. It’s best to persuade employees to stay.

1. Check in regularly

Find out what your employees want by having conversations with them regularly. Your team will appreciate the effort, and you’ll be better informed about the day-to-day issues your employees encounter.

You can also use a real-time feedback tool to measure employee satisfaction. How engaged are your employees? How’s that new initiative working? This way you’ll have data about the mood of your employees and you can make swift decisions in response.

2. Make sure you hire the right people

One of the easiest ways to prevent turnover is to hire people who are low flight risks. If a candidate has quit three jobs that year, they’re not likely to stay longer than that at your company. During interviews, make sure you give the candidate a complete picture of what working at your company is like. This way you can determine if they’re a good fit with your company’s mission and culture.

3. Make them partners

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If employees are committed to your company’s long-term success, they’re more likely to stay. Demonstrate to your employees that they’re valuable members of your team. Some ways to accomplish this include:

• Providing consistent, high-quality professional development and training
• Rewarding employees for their ideas rather than just their effort. Offer incentives to thought leaders, employees who devise creative solutions to problems
• Taking employees out to lunch and including them on business trips
• Plotting their career path. Show them you’re serious about keeping them at your company. A major reason people leave jobs is because of a lack of upward mobility

4. Live your mission

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Our findings showed that employees, especially those in the millennial generation, are becoming more interested in working for socially responsible companies. They don’t just want to make money — they want their company to have a positive impact on the world.

Your company’s mission probably says something about how your goals are beyond just profits. But are you walking the walk? Constantly evaluating how your company can do better will push those middle-of-the-pack employees to become more loyal.

Good employees are going to leave your company — it’s just the nature of business. You can improve your employee retention rates by using the above strategies to make sure that they’ll think twice about quitting.

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