In any business, the balancing act between retaining your best employees and controlling overhead costs can seem like a challenging task. On the one hand, every manager wants to keep top talent and avoid a skills deficit, but only some businesses are able to give out raises every year. I’ve seen this issue being particularly acute in competitive industries like insurance and banking.
We’ve all heard the stories of how someone’s best employees felt unappreciated and left for other opportunities—either with greater compensation or a more desirable work-life balance. And within that story is the key term “unappreciated.”
For businesses on a tight budget, there are employee retention strategies you can use to improve employee engagement and keep your best employees as an integral part of your team. In this article, I’ll share some of the strategies I’ve personally seen work and the reasons why employee appreciation gifts go a long way toward supporting your team.
Why Retaining Employees Goes Beyond Salaries
Every employee likes a raise. A salary increase is a big driver toward employee retention and letting them know they’re valued.
However, the boost in motivation an employee receives from a salary increase is temporary. Not long after they receive a raise, the new benchmark will become the norm, and once they’ve adjusted to their new pay level, any dissatisfaction they experienced before may return.
Essentially, the employees on your team are people at the core. Office culture and relationships with other employees often play a greater role in their satisfaction with their jobs than many managers realize. What’s more, simple employee appreciation gifts can help create loyalty among your team members by providing incentives for quality work and recognition for a job well done long after the high of a raise has worn off.
The Role of Employee Retention Strategies That Actually Work
Recognizing Employees with Personalized Appreciation Gifts
- Share how tailored employee appreciation gifts can make employees feel valued.
- Suggest examples of practical, creative, or experience-based gifts.
- Reference real-life success stories where appreciation increased retention.
No two teams I’ve worked with are alike, and that goes for the individuals on those teams as well. Tailored employee appreciation gifts help employees feel seen and valued for who they are, not just a cog in the machine.
And this doesn’t have to be anything particularly difficult to tease out of them. For example, perhaps your team has a coffeeholic or someone who loves tech gadgets. Getting them a small gift of a new high-quality mug or a personalized phone charger can help them feel appreciated.
Scopely even celebrates work anniversaries by giving out unusual gifts like a personalized oil painting. This novel approach has resulted in 86% of employees feeling the company is doing what it should to keep them on board.
Building a Culture of Growth and Recognition
As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to recognize the human aspect of the workplace. A culture of growth and recognition keeps employees engaged in their jobs and aware that their contributions aren’t being overlooked.
The simple fact is that employees who feel acknowledged are 69% more likely to do better at work.
How to Improve Employee Engagement Without Overhauling Budgets
Invest in Professional Development Opportunities
Let’s face it: most employees don’t see themselves working for the same company for the rest of their lives. They likely have a career progression in their minds that doesn’t end with you.
However, a small investment in professional development opportunities can go a long way toward satisfying their career progression dreams while keeping them on your team. For example, online courses, mentorships or in-house workshops that may be out of reach for an individual’s budget can drive loyalty when they have the chance to improve on the company’s dime.
This not only improves employee engagement but often saves the company money in the meantime.
Encouraging Feedback and Acting on It
Soliciting feedback is not only a great way to learn where your company stands in the eyes of its employees it’s also a fantastic employee retention strategy. Make sure you check-in regularly with your employees either directly or through surveys to see where you can improve. This will help identify sentiments among your team before they become a disappearing member.
The important thing to note here is acting on the feedback. All too often, companies solicit feedback from employees and do nothing, which leads to employee dissatisfaction. Implementing ideas from feedback builds trust and connection with your employees.
How to Retain Employees Through Connection and Support
Flexible Work Arrangements
Connecting with and supporting your employees should be a primary concern if you want to retain the best talent and not every employee is motivated purely by money. Work-life balance is often cited as being one of the biggest drivers of employee loss or retention.
Instead of raising salaries, consider implementing flexible work arrangements. Recent studies have shown the rise of hybrid or remote working has kept employees satisfied in their jobs but hasn’t negatively affected their performance. At trip.com, a Chinese company, allowing employees to work from home two days a week reduced the quit rate by a third.
Measuring Success: How to Know if Your Strategies Work
While using any of these employee retention strategies with your own team is great, you’ll also need to know if what you did is working. Make sure you’re closely watching your turnover and retention rates and comparing them to before and after implementation.
You can take note of core KPIs like an employee engagement index by distributing surveys among your team to solicit feedback. Ask them about their job satisfaction and motivation, then compare this data to how many employees participate in engagement programs that you’ve set up or even the rate of absenteeism at the office.
Build Loyalty Without Breaking the Bank
There are numerous strategies for retaining top talent aside from salary increases alone. And in fact, many of them can be more effective at maintaining a dynamic team.
Leveraging non-monetary incentives like gifts, career development courses, and public acknowledgement for a job well done helps increase employee engagement and connection and will keep your best employees happy, especially during the long season between raises.
If you’re managing a team and looking for ways to keep employees content and active, I encourage you to explore using some of the strategies mentioned in this guide. If you’re looking for more in-depth insights into how you can get the most productivity out of a lively and effective team, sign up for our newsletter.
This will also grant you first access to my forthcoming book on all aspects of employee retention and building high-performing teams, which is full of practical advice to help your business thrive for decades to come.
