Small businesses are desperate to retain their employees and, as the popular adage goes, desperate times call for desperate measures.
Many small businesses are devising creative ways to combat attrition because they are afraid of their employees leaving.
That’s right.
From providing educational assistance to sponsoring a free trip anywhere in the world, small businesses are dangling a number of fringe benefits to entice workers. And they have good reasons to do so. According to a survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees leaving small companies voluntarily remains on the rise.
The Fear of Losing
For businesses with a smaller workforce, losing even one employee can be a cause of worry. “We don’t have a 401(k) and can’t always offer a big salary,” Samantha Martin, owner of a small PR firm in Manhattan tells New York Times. “So I’m forced all the time to think about how to keep key people.”
Martin is not alone. For most small businesses, finding ways to retain high-performing talent is both a challenge and a necessity. It’s not difficult to understand why.
For many top-performing employees, the lure of a good pay hike offered by a large organization is too tempting to be ignored. Small businesses cannot compete with the bigger companies on pay. That’s why they fear losing their best performers to the bigger players.
It’s also a bigger loss for them because they spend money and resources to train employees. When a trained employee leaves a job, it means the company doesn’t achieve the return on its investment. For a company operating on a smaller budget, this could be a serious blow.
Plus, there’s the risk of not finding the right person for the job. Worsening skill shortages pose a major challenge for smaller firms dependent on their modest workforce to do the job. Since they can’t compete with bigger companies on pay, they have a harder time finding the right people. “Employees with critical skills pose the biggest flight risk,” Bill Pelster, a principal in Deloitte’s U.S. talent services division says to Fortune.
Share Your Experience
Are you afraid of your employees leaving? Have you been struggling to retain your best performers? Did you lose a great employee? How did you react to it?
We’d love to hear your experience.
Employee Leaving Photo via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
It happens. But as a small business, you really don’t have a lot to offer compared to the bigger businesses. While there are employees who choose to stay, the talented ones still choose to leave.
This one doesn’t apply all the time. Some not chose to leave to earn big from other companies, they might want to learn from the small firm they’re working with and will start to build up their own in the future as well. Talented ones don’t just bite for the money right away, they also think of stability and benefits before jumping off the other yard.