Have you seen an exodus from your company lately? Notice a steady increase in exit interviews on your calendar? Wonder why people are leaving  and what you can do to make them stay?

Many large companies have engagement surveys and fancy HR metrics to help them figure out why people are leaving.  But what about the small HR shops?  I’m talking about the everyday practitioner in an small to medium sized company.  How do you begin to even figure out a retention plan with your small budget?

Here are some retention tips for your company that cost little to no money:

• Why wait until someone has left the company to figure out why they are leaving? Have a stay interview instead. Interview your top performers and find out what they like and don’t like about the company.  Compile the results and use those as a data point in discussions with managers about what they are doing right.  For more information read this blog post from Tlnt.com
• Do you have a work/life policy? If so is it enforced or laughed off? What does it take for an employee to utilize the policy? If you offer flexible scheduling or other work/life benefits make it easy for people to apply for these.  They shouldn’t need the sign off of the president to work four ten hour days.  Again though,  this depends on the type of business and workforce you have.
• Attend local HR/SHRM group events to find out what other companies in your area offer.  There are a couple advantages here:

1. You will get to meet other HR practitioners, swap stories and get some best practice info.
2. The knowledge you gain is a good starting point to figure out where you want to take your (non medical) benefits: market leader,  mainstream,  etc;  You may find out you are actually a leader in Work/Life balance benefits – great information to pass on to your employee’s!
• Take a look at your management team. Who has been hemorrhaging employee’s lately? Who has the steadiest team with lowest turnover?  You can learn a lot about your company by its most popular and least popular managers.  We all want to feel like our work matters and has value,  make sure your employee’s feel that way and it will go a long way to help your retention efforts.

Finally,  I have one other option for you but I warn you it costs money….pay people a fair,  market leading salary.  Why? Money doesn’t buy happiness or employee retention but it makes life easy: flexible child care,  ability to take a real, relaxing vacation,  afford a gym,  good food,  etc;

If you implement some low cost retention strategies, train your managers and pay your employee’s well,  I think you are on the way to retaining good employees.  But if you are struggling with the budget numbers start with the four bullet points above and I think you will see improvement.  What do you think? Tell me in the comments!