Are you losing your best employees? Is your retention rate skyrocketing? Perhaps you’re promoting the wrong people, or not honoring your commitments.
But it’s not the end of the world! Your best people CAN come back to you. Here’s how to make it happen.
1.Tell them they’re welcome back!
If your best employees still feel you value them at time they leave, there’s a chance they will come back. There is a caveat, however. You need to fix the issues that drove them away.
To do this, you need to conduct a SWOT analysis of your business. You need to know your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities and threats. Here are some questions to get you started:
Do you recognize contributions and reward good work?
Do you care about your employees?
Do you hire and promote the wrong people?
Do you honor your commitments?
Do you increase their workload without changing their status?
The above questions must be answered and flaws addressed. Otherwise, your good employees will continue to leave, and won’t return even if you ask them.
2. Counter-offer
Understand what it would take to prevent your best employees from leaving by asking them why they are resigning. If you can give them better offer than the competitor, do it.
But remember that your best employees aren’t necessarily leaving you for a better salary. Increasing their salary to keep them is like using a band aid on an open wound. Get a deeper understanding of your flaws in order to fix the root cause of their resignation.
3. Keep in touch
When your best employee leaves you, you don’t need to burn bridges. Keep in touch on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Find reasons to take them out for coffee. Chances are they left you for competitors and therefore, keeping in touch will help you be in tune with what’s going on in your industry. More importantly, it gives you an opportunity to share the changes you’ve made in those same areas your employee felt you were weak at.
4. Promote and recognize
If you’re open to welcoming your employee back, then you would probably also be open to providing excellent references. Go beyond what’s required by law by sharing more than just the employee’s position, the time he/she has been with you and the role. Elaborate on how they executed their tasks. Show them their performance didn’t go unnoticed.
Leading in motion does not mean being discouraged by drawbacks. On the contrary: it’s turning a negative into a positive. It’s your ability to welcome back great ex-employees.
