As a small business owner, you know all too well how difficult it is to find and keep a good team together. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 3 million people quit their jobs every month. As much as 30% leave within the first 3 months of employment. These stats are terrifying—but the best employee retention software can keep your business from becoming part of these statistics.
If you’re wondering how to enhance employee engagement at work, employee retention software is a great place to start. These tools can include pulse surveys, feedback collection, recognition, rewards, and wellness programs that can not only help you understand your employees’ needs—it can help you meet them.
Want to hear more? We thought you might! Below, we cover different kinds of employee retention software, the perks they offer, and how they can make your employees happier—and your business happier in the process.
What is employee retention software?
It sounds fancy, but employee retention software (or HR retention software) is just a toolkit that can help you keep a pulse on the overall happiness of your team.
Put simply, HR retention software gives you a digital hub to track things like employee feedback, performance, and job satisfaction. It can also help manage the employee lifecycle by streamlining HR processes, managing hiring, compensation, data analysis, and offering personalized upskilling and career paths to enhance job satisfaction and retention.
Taken together, these tools can help you build a retention program for employees—and monitor the results. The best employee retention software will help you find where employee happiness is excelling and where it can be worked on. It’ll also help you identify your star players and build a career track for them to thrive in.
In short, employee retention software is all about creating a happy, productive work environment where your team feels appreciated and engaged—and happy employees are less likely to leave for greener pastures.
Why do you need employee retention software?
High employee turnover is expensive. A study by Gallup found that collectively, U.S. businesses lose a trillion dollars a year on employee turnover. That’s right—a trillion. The same study found that replacing an employee can cost half of their salary in the best case scenario, and two times their salary in the worst case.
What’s more, Gallup points out that a 100-person organization with an average employee salary of $50,000 could spend up to $2.6 million on turnover. Yikes!
As a small business owner, high employee turnover is simply something you cannot afford.
Enter: employee retention software. What if one small investment could help you avoid all these costs?
Not convinced? Here are five ways we think employee retention software makes a difference in keeping work satisfaction high.
5 ways employee retention tools reduce turnover.
Having a solid employee retention strategy is crucial for improving the organization’s retention of employees. Gathering feedback through exit interviews and addressing underlying issues can enhance this strategy. Additionally, team building activities can contribute to the employee retention strategy by promoting team bonding, motivation, and engagement.
But an employee retention tool is also a great way to reduce your turnover. Among other things, it becomes a great place to organize everything you learn from your other retention strategies!
Here are five pivotal ways employee retention tools make all the difference:
1. Boost employee engagement.
The best employee retention software will help you to foster team engagement and create a culture of appreciation and teamwork through continuous recognition efforts. Some tools to create this recognition may include:
Pulse surveys: A pulse survey is a short set of questions sent out frequently to get the “pulse” of how people are feeling about your business. During less turbulent times, pulse surveys reveal trends in overall morale and job satisfaction. During harder times, like a down-size or managerial transition, they can help stave off problems before they arise.
Feedback management: Once you start getting feedback from your team, you need to keep it organized and manageable. HR retention software does this very thing. Your team can be assured of their anonymity when giving feedback through the software and you can design structured questions for them to answer, gathering opinions on targeted areas of interest.
Engagement Analytics: Analytics are powerful for understanding who is most engaged in your team. This helps you see areas where engagement is lacking and develop strategies to address those issues.
2. Improve recognition and rewards.
No one wants to feel like the work they do is thankless. The best working relationships depend on shows of appreciation—or employees might start thinking they can do better elsewhere.
In the flurry of doing business, it’s all too easy to inadvertently take your star players for granted. You may verbally express your appreciation now and then, but nurturing your team’s trust may include recognizing them in tangible ways. Developing an effective employee retention program is crucial, as it aligns with the company’s goals and values while addressing the needs and concerns of employees.
And let’s face it—as much as your team may like you and enjoy their work, they are ultimately doing their job to finance their life. Giving them regular raises, bonuses, and levels of rewards to shoot for is one of the primary ways your team will feel appreciated.
Many small businesses want to be able to pay their teams more, but struggle with the ability to do so at their current revenue level. If you can’t give a big fat raise to your team, you can still give them rewards they will appreciate, such as additional time off, a larger employee discount, and similar.
Retention software can help you set up and manage a variety of reward programs tailored to your business culture and preferences without having to manually track who is entitled to what and on what timeline.
3. Develop skills and career opportunities.
56% of job seekers are seeking career growth opportunities, including learning and career development.
Talent management can help with career development and retention by leveraging AI and HR analytics to provide insights into employees’ skills, strengths, and areas for improvement.
Employee retention software fosters career development with:
Goal setting: communicate with your team members about where they want their career to go. Are they interested in learning different roles in your business than the one they’re currently filling? How can you help them get there? What skills do they need to learn? Craft a skill development plan with actionable milestones right in your software.
Performance reviews: regular performance reviews help you keep in close communication with every individual member of your team. They help you see their individual strengths and areas to work on and help you remember when it’s time for a raise or performance-based reward.
Learning platform integrations: many employee retention programs allow you to integrate with other learning platforms. This means your team can upskill with the software you already have instead of going out and getting more subscriptions and learning new interfaces.
4. Communicate better—business-wide.
As we’ve mentioned, good communication is the backbone of any healthy relationship. When managing a team, though, the wires can get crossed very fast and miscommunications can abound.
Avoid this pitfall with a central communication hub where everyone is heard and every issue is addressed. The best retention platforms include built-in communication tools like chats, forums, and news feeds. These features facilitate open communication, keeping employees informed and connected.
5. Gather data-driven insights.
Data is power. The best employee retention software gives you insights that let you know what’s going on in measurable terms.
With clean, clear data in hand, you can confidently make decisions for your business to help reduce turnover. Some analytics features you can expect from employee retention tools are:
Customizable reports and dashboards: see the pivotal information at a glance. Build your reports and dashboards to reflect only what you need to see from day to day. Monitor key metrics in real time for a comprehensive view of how everyone’s doing to help manage your day.
Predictive modeling: An advanced use of AI, predictive modeling examines multiple different factors to predict turnover risk. These can include team feedback and engagement, average tenure of current and past teammates, and team performance.
3 great employee retention software options to help you keep your team.
If you’re ready to slow turnover and retain your talent, here are the best employee retention software tools to consider.
Homebase
Homebase is a workforce management app designed for small service-based businesses. It’s an all-in-one solution that streamlines employee scheduling and time tracking with an extensive list of features including team calendars, time clocks, automatic notifications, and budget forecasting.
Because it’s designed specifically for small businesses, Homebase offers industry-specific integrations like Restaurant365 and Tiphaus. Integrations can greatly simplify your admin hours and let you get back to doing what you do best: running your business. Plus, centralized communication makes sending your appreciation—and scheduling up-skill training—all the easier.
Acuity scheduling
Acuity Scheduling is the best tool for appointment-based shift scheduling or small businesses that rely on recurring appointments. Their automated booking feature allows clients to easily make, cancel, and reschedule their own appointments, eliminating a lot of administrative hassle for you.
Better client management means operations are running smoothly and your working environment stays peaceful and flowing. Add in Acuity’s workflow management tools and you’re due to take a huge administrative burden off your employees with one simple tool.
Connecteam
Connecteam is the best free scheduling tool with customizable templates and unlimited checklists. Make employee scheduling a breeze with an easy drag-and-drop interface that can be seamlessly shared across teams, even on mobile.
It’s comprehensive and easy to access for any team member, regardless of where they are: the app makes communications and scheduling a snap. Connecteam’s dashboard keeps everything in one place, avoiding miscommunication and scheduling conflicts.
End the chaos. Start growing.
Small business management doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Homebase offers a free plan that includes essential features for small businesses with up to 20 employees at a single location.
One app. One place. No headaches. Get started for free.
Remember: This is not legal advice. If you have questions about your particular situation, please consult a lawyer, CPA, or other appropriate professional advisor or agency.
