There has been a lot of talk in the media in late 2021 and early 2022 around the Great Regeneration in Australia.  Whilst time will be the judge if the audits and analysts are right in their predictions, one fact that cannot be disputed is that Australia is currently seeing record low unemployment which means that smart businesses are rethinking their retention strategies and identifying key staff.

There are many tricks and strategies that businesses of all sizes can consider when it comes to retaining their staff including:

• Proactively salary benchmarking their roles against the market and ensuring that remuneration is in line with market expectations. Due to the tight labour market at the beginning of 2022, most of our clients when we have carried out benchmarking on their behalf have realised that the market in terms of wage expectations have moved and identified retention risk.
• Consider offering incentive / bonus / profit sharing schemes to all employees across the business based on achievement of KPI’s / other measurable and objective results. Some businesses have set these reward targets to be paid every 6 months  subject to the employee being still employed encouraging year round engagement and demonstrating that every employee is valuable.
• Retention strategies do not always have to be purely financial, many businesses create and offer additional perks such as free weekly car washes and performance recognition programs to aid their retention efforts.

There is a myriad of strategies available for businesses of all sizes to proactively manage employee retention regardless of the size of their business.  With the threat of the Great Resignation upon us, but more importantly in this low unemployment environment, the first step is to begin with a proactive review of your current situation and form a strategic retention plan.  From here specific retention strategies can be considered in alignment with the overarching strategy.  But if you don’t strategise, you are simply throwing darts at a dartboard and hoping something sticks.

If your business would like some assistance in benchmarking and putting together an employee retention strategy, then please reach out to On Demand HR by visiting our website at ondemandhr.com.au.