Establishing methods to encourage employee recognition and satisfaction is a major key to reduce attrition and ensure employees that desire to continue with their workplace for many years. In exploring the factors that affect employee retention, I discovered multiple methods of increasing employee retention.
Employee retention is cited as a number one concern for many businesses according to research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Keeping employees happy and satisfied can be a challenge, and the consequences of failing to do so can be costly. Employee attrition can be difficult to predict and even more difficult still to correct, incurring hefty fees for human resource processes and procedures and imposing training delays and other complications. In contrast to these difficulties, multiple benefits have been observed in increasing employee satisfaction, with the University of Oxford finding that workers who are happy and satisfied have a marked increase in productivity (https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-10-24-happy-workers-are-13-more-productive)
Pay equality is a major factor to consider when attempting to attract and retain employees, and an area which our country still struggles considerably in both the public and private sector. As early as the 1960s, the passage of The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and other subsequent legislations prohibited discrimination in pay based on factors such as sex, age, race, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation (https://www.eeoc.gov/youth/pay-discrimination). However even today, pay discrimination persists in both the public and private sectors, up to and including jobs in state and federal governmental institutions. Pay gaps based on gender, race and age can be significant. A study by Payscale in 2021 determined that women still make, on average, only $0.82 for every dollar a man makes, with some gendered occupations such as wait staff increasing the pay gap to $0.78 (https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-gap/). While pay is not the only factor necessary to ensure that employees feel valued and recognized by the organizations they work for, it is a significant factor and maintaining a fair and competitive pay rate is something that companies must pay particular attention to.
Another method of increasing the desire of employees to continue with their current company is to create and maintain robust employee recognition programs. Employee recognition programs can include both monetary and nonmonetary forms of compensation. Monetary forms of employee perks and recognition can include health benefits, retirement plans, bonuses, commissions, profit sharing, stock options, and paid time off. Non-monetary forms of employee recognition can include thank you initiatives, improved working conditions such as the ability to work from home, and in-office perks such as meals, health gyms and childcare.
In order to better understand the intricacies of employee satisfaction, I researched companies that are considered superior in what they offer their employees for commonalities and reasonings as to why they are considered good employers. Fortune magazine maintains a list of the 100 best companies to work for. The top 10 in this list are Cisco Systems, Salesforce, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Wegmans Food Markets, Rocket Companies, UKG, Texas Health Resources, Camden Property Trust, Capital One Financial and American Express. Some common themes between these companies were a focus on employee health and safety, flexible working environments, a focus on competitive pay, and robust benefits package.