It goes without saying that for staff to enjoy a role, they need to feel part of a team
It’s clear that when looking for new roles, Australians value things such as salary, career progression, job flexibility and workplace culture, signalling obvious areas for leaders to improve on in their own workplaces, according to joint managing director of Citrus Group, Paul Smith.
Smith added that high staff turnover can be extremely costly for businesses, and so leaders should look to creating workplace environments that support staff retention.
His comments come as a new study commissioned by Citrus Group has revealed that 22% of Australians left a previous role due to lack of career progression.
Moreover, when asked what attracted them most to a workplace, the study revealed that salary came out on top, with 30% of Australians listing this at the most important factor when searching for a role.
The second highest was job flexibility (22%), followed by career progression (14%), culture (13%), the option to work from home (12%), incentives (5%), leadership (4%) and extra leave coming in lowest in the consideration set (2%), offering leaders and managers areas for improvement to retain staff.
Additional reasons provided by those surveyed as to why they departed a job were; no career progression (22%); no option to work from home (15%); low salary (14%); bad culture (13%); no job flexibility (9%) and finally, no job incentives (7%).
Smith offers the following advice on how to recruit and retain great talent:
Create an inclusive team environment
It goes without saying that for staff to enjoy a role, they need to feel part of a team. In fact, 13% of Australians cited bad culture as a top reason for leaving a previous role.
As we know, culture comes from the top, thus managers are crucial to creating inclusive and supportive teams. Some ways of doing so are ensuring you hire people who fit in with your culture, having cultural ambassadors within your team, creating a positive environment, and encouraging social connections.
Offer fair pay to employees
With the largest number of Australians (30%) listing salary as most important to them when looking for a new job, it’s clear to see that fair pay is crucial to staff happiness. As a leader, it’s up to you to ensure all staff are paid fairly for the work they do, A and that they aren’t discriminated against in any way.
Build trust
Employees need to be led by someone that they trust. As such, leaders must make sure to always be open and honest with all staff members, share company successes and losses (where appropriate), and ensure they always have their team member’s backs and best interests in mind. Employees that don’t have trust in their boss will in turn become unproductive, disengaged and disconnected.
Offer job flexibility to staff members
With 22% of Australians citing job flexibility as the most important factor in a workplace, and 12% stating the option to work from home even more important, clearly job flexibility needs to be a top priority for all managers. By allowing staff to work from home, implementing flexible working hours or job sharing, staff work-life balance will improve, in turn increasing productivity, job satisfaction and company success.
Foster employee development
Our research showed that 14% of Australians felt that career progression and a clear career path was most attractive to them when choosing a workplace, signalling the need for great leaders to provide just that. By taking a keen interest in each staff members’ professional development and career goals and giving them clear guidelines, they will achieve these, great leaders can create teams that feel acknowledged and supported in their growth, which is key for a thriving team.