Corporate practices that boost staff retention

Insights

• Companies find it a challenge to retain employees.
• Apart from investing in new technology, they must strive to continuously adapt their business around the technology, and implement strategic corporate initiatives to keep staff.
• Adopting microchange management, upskilling employees, and reducing digital friction can be effective ways to achieve better talent retention.

Close to 28% of people who quit their job – during the pandemic – have boomeranged to the same job, as per recent analysis by Harvard Business Review. This poses a challenge for companies to retain their new hires and prevent them from migrating to their previous workplaces. Brand perception and employee experience are crucial to employee retention. Showing interest in their employees’ welfare, introducing training initiatives, and maintaining clear communication about the firm’s vision and mission can help employers engage their staff effectively and support them to work well, increasing their job satisfaction and aiding retention.

Adopting new technology has also been a go-to for companies across the world to retain staff. As seen in Infosys’s The Future of Work 2023 report, organizations are investing heavily in the automation of digital tools to better manage and improve remote working outcomes. Infosys’s report, Digital Radar 2023 - The next digital frontiers: Culture, operating model, and live data, shows again that digital experience, innovation, and net zero positively correlate with profit growth. Of these, digital experience and innovation help organizations improve brand perception.

However, the report also indicates that investments in digital technology cannot be the sole contributor. To maximize value from their investments, firms need to change the way they structure their business around technology. They must constantly adapt their business around the technology to make the most of it. That said, making these changes is not simple.

Where companies are going wrong

For companies to succeed in these areas, they require a foundation of live data which involves practices linked to transparent, accessible, and widely shared data. They need a product-centric mindset: in other words, they need to organize themselves around the product, and not the process. They must develop a culture of taking responsible risks.

However, only 5% of the companies Infosys surveyed are currently implementing a live data approach, while 90% of those companies have the wrong organizational structure and culture to unlock the next frontier of digital growth. Just 50% reported being organized around products, and only 14% are prioritizing the right cultural practices. Only 7% of firms are product-centric and using responsible, risk-taking cultural practices to change how the business makes money. However, by embracing a few practices, firms can improve their shortcomings.

What companies should be doing

Adopting meaningful corporate practices can help organizations get the best out of digital experience – fully engaging with their employees and customers through technologies – to achieve better business outcomes, innovation, and net zero to retain employees, better than their peers.

Prioritizing a data-driven culture

Giving leaders and employees good access to quality data can make the difference. Employee retention can improve by seven percentage points when firms give leaders and employees good access to quality data, as per Digital Radar 2023. The companies surveyed said that in terms of the practices that help them meet their innovation, net zero, and digital experience objectives, five of the top six have to do with a data-driven, diverse, and flexible leadership that makes quick, inspirational decisions. This makes a culture of taking responsible risks one to aspire for.

Reducing digital friction

Digital friction can result from factors such as the presence of too many platforms, lack of digital accessibility, lack of IT support, and screen fatigue. Identifying digital friction can companies improve employee engagement by 12 percentage points. It also drives employee retention. Developing a product-centric mindset allows companies to reduce the displeasure of the user much faster and with better, fresher data.

Building tomorrow’s skills today

Upskilling employees is associated with increasing staff retention. The companies surveyed in Infosys’ The Future of Work 2023 report pointed to reskilling as one of the most key initiatives that positively affected retention. The Digital Radar 2023 findings – on continuous digital learning of employees being a top-ranked practice across innovation, net zero, and digital experience – complement this insight. This reinforces the importance of reskilling, clarifying its position as one of the growth areas for companies in the next two years.

Delivering in bite-sized chunks

Fostering a better, data-driven, leadership culture cannot be a one-time effort. It requires firms to adopt a microchange management approach, which means changing their behavior by implementing a series of smaller changes to bring about a long-lasting change. By developing an attitude of continuously evolving, they can make small but steady modifications to habits, and measure them to decide on the next course of action.

These measures combined may be worth exploring for companies that want to not just increase business gains, but also improve employee experience and brand perception and, in turn, retain employees.