How peer support can improve employee retention
Imagine the modern workplace. It is ever changing to suit the needs of the evolving workforce.
Many brands are working hard to accommodate these needs by making vital changes to their traditional office structure. Breakout rooms have been built, workplace wellness programmes have been implemented and employers are constantly looking for ways to improve the everyday experience for their employees. These are all fantastic ways of progressing your own workplace culture, however, there seems to be one common outcry among the millennial workforce which needs to be taken onboard. This is for more peer support within the workplace.
According to the Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017, millennials are now saying their that ideal working week would include more peer-to-peer training sessions and more coaching from those above them. This point is also highlighted by the Association of Talent Development which have said, backed by results of their recent survey, that businesses with formal mentoring programmes tend to show higher staff retention rates and better staff engagement than those who do not. Employee retention should be a number one priority for HR departments, and for employers, across all industries. With the wealth of talented individuals who are graduating from both Irish and International universities each year, you don’t exactly want to be losing them to your competitors.
But how can improved peer support programmes be used to help reduce staff turnover in your business? What structures can be put in place to not only help improve your staff retention rates but help your new employees unlock their full potential? Here at Glandore, we strive to keep up with the latest workplace trends and are always looking to learn how to improve our facilities for all of our members. We’ve put together a few reasons why we think that peer support programmes are the way forward for all brands who are actively striving to modernise their workplace culture and wish to retain their brightest employees.
Further your onboarding processes
Onboarding (the process of integrating a new employee into an organisation) new employees is a vital process to ensure that they feel welcome within their first week and are up to speed from the get-go. But this shouldn’t just stop here.
By formalising a peer support programme, these employees can continue to grow within your business by having a coach to touch base with on a regular basis. Basic questions, which one may feel to be a bit silly, should be encouraged at these sessions so that nothing is left unclear.
This will only benefit both your new employees and the overall workflow as fewer errors will appear.
Help path the careers of your newbies
Now that your millennial employees have settled in nicely and are powering through tasks, it might be time to start thinking about which way you would like them to progress through your business.
You may notice that they are excelling in a particular area and would like to give them a push in that direction in the future. But how do you approach this? Dropping it on them after their first year is not a good solution as they may feel pressure to strictly follow this path. This is where peer support comes in.
Through regular meetings, said employee can begin to plan out which direction they would like to progress their career throughout your company. By having these conversations, employees are more likely to stay with your company and progress their career with you rather than with a competitor.
Equipping your new starters with insider knowledge
When a new employee starts with your company, they’ll begin to realise that nearly everybody they work with knows a lot more than they do.
This may be as simple as knowing who to go to for certain information, all the way up to knowing the entire corporate hierarchy. Peer support programmes are the perfect way to help convey this kind of information to new starters so that they don’t feel lost when they have the most basic of problems.
They may be a whizz in their hired field, but if they don’t know who to email for simple information then they may begin to feel a little left out early on in their career. A well-informed employee is more likely to stay than one who is still asking for HR details three months down the line.