Nebel Crowhurst, CPO at Reward Gateway | Edenred, shares her thoughts on employee retention and how best companies can make their employees feel appreciated, leading to better business outcomes.

“In recent years it’s clear that businesses have woken up to the fact that the retention of talent directly impacts the bottom line performance.

“This is not only due to the costs of replacing lost talent, but also through the increased productivity of highly engaged and motivated talent. With this comes the awareness that organisations need to ensure there is a focus on employee retention and benefits as part of its broader People Strategy, and to do so through dedicated HR resources that have expertise in this area.

“Historically, it was somewhat commonplace to perhaps have a “Compensation Manager” role within the HR function, but retaining people is so much more than simply their base pay. People are looking for more in their total reward and expect a broad offering of employee benefits, beyond that of a standard workplace pension. We see this in our research, for example, with benefits like food vouchers or healthy office snacks reporting 11% higher employee retention rates.

“In line with this, People Strategies should focus on creating a culture of appreciation. This enables organisations to build people initiatives that add the greatest value and have the highest impact on our people, with the intention of retaining our valuable talent.

“Our Appreciation Index found that nearly nine in 10 employees (88%) agree that they work harder when feeling appreciated, and the same number even report feeling more loyal to their employer (88%). Not only does appreciation improve overall employee performance, but it also generates significant savings on costs by not having to continually re-recruit, on board and upskill people.

“With the next generation of the workforce having even greater expectations in terms of employee benefits, there is more opportunity for businesses and HR functions to place an emphasis on how they deliver highly impactful retention and benefits strategies – and businesses should not miss out on this.”