How To Improve Employee Retention: 16 Strategies to Empower Your Workforce

Poor retention can significantly impact your bottom line. Each employee replacement costs your company three to four times their salary. To top it off, half of U.S. employees keep an eye out for new job opportunities. Employee retention matters now more than ever. Your strategy could set you apart. For instance, harnessing and connecting your enterprise knowledge helps employees thrive and promotes longer tenure.

The usual approaches to employee retention often focus on competitive salary and benefits, strong leadership development, and clear career growth paths. Recently, more industry leaders are recognizing another strategy that produces positive results: connecting employees directly to the company’s Enterprise Intelligence and knowledge-sharing systems, allowing them to perform their work efficiently.

Learn more about how to improve employee retention and motivation with both traditional and novel approaches. These 16 strategies will help you build a workplace where people stay, thrive, and give their best.

1. Connect Teams to Enterprise Knowledge

Knowledge remains one of your organization’s most valuable assets, and leveraging it is key to successful employee retention. Your organization needs to create, preserve, share, and connect employee knowledge effectively. 

Organizations risk major operational problems and significant employee frustration when vital information stays trapped in silos or individual minds. In fact, Fortune 500 companies lose approximately $31.5 billion annually due to ineffective knowledge sharing.

Teams that connect well with organizational knowledge see clear benefits:

• Higher engagement and satisfaction: Job satisfaction increases significantly in companies with well-developed knowledge management, resulting in improved employee retention.
• Better decisions: Easy access to frictionless knowledge helps 80% of employees make smarter choices.
• Less wasted time: Teams waste over five hours weekly waiting for task-related information, which costs organizations roughly $2,700 per employee each year.
• More innovation: Teams solve problems better and create new ideas through knowledge sharing.

Recent surveys show that 98% of employees prefer organizations that encourage knowledge sharing. These employees feel more productive when information flows freely between departments, which is a key factor among the best ways to improve employee retention. Additionally, employees in companies with mature knowledge management practices report higher engagement and job satisfaction, which in turn leads to lower turnover rates.

2. Offer Fair and Competitive Compensation

Fair pay is the lifeblood of keeping employees happy and engaged. A recent study reveals that 76% of employees planning to quit cite poor pay and benefits as their primary reason. Also, 63% of workers leave their jobs because they feel underpaid.

Good compensation goes beyond just the base salary. It includes your complete rewards package, comprising benefits, bonuses, incentives, and recognition programs. Smart compensation management strikes a balance between market realities and internal fairness. Many organizations still don’t realize how much pay influences their staff’s decision to stay.

Your compensation strategy should:

• Check market rates regularly: Compare your pay packages with industry standards to stay competitive.
• Keep things clear: More than half of employees want clear pay and promotion structures to stay motivated.
• Stay fair inside and out: Ensure that similar roles receive comparable pay, aligning with market rates.
• Look at the big picture: Build comprehensive packages that combine good base pay with retirement plans, healthcare, and wellness programs.

Organizations with innovative pay practices attract better talent. They also create financial stability that allows employees to focus on work instead of looking for new jobs, which is a key part of how to improve employee morale and retention.

3. Improve the Onboarding Experience

Your organization’s onboarding experience is a vital first chapter in an employee’s time with you. Many organizations overlook this initial period, which shapes how long employees stay with them.

Onboarding goes way beyond paperwork and welcome tours. It’s a detailed process that brings new employees into your organization’s structure, culture, vision, and values. Quality onboarding builds the foundation for long-term success. Both employees and employers benefit from increased efficiency, stronger loyalty, and higher participation.

The numbers tell a clear story: only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization handles onboarding well. This failure directly disrupts retention. SHRM reports that up to 50% of employees leave within their first 18 months.

Organizations, like call centers, that keep their employees engaged during onboarding experience achieve higher profits, lower turnover rates, reduced absenteeism, and more satisfied customers.

Here’s how to revolutionize your onboarding approach:

• Start before day one: Launch preboarding right after offer acceptance. This prevents no-shows, as many employers report that candidates accept jobs but never show up on day one.
• Extend the timeline: Make onboarding a year-long process instead of a single-day event.
• Assign mentors or buddies: Top organizations are 2.5 times more likely to use mentors during onboarding.
• Connect new hires to activated knowledge: Give new hires immediate, structured access to essential enterprise knowledge, systems, and documented processes.
• Schedule regular check-ins: Weekly one-on-ones in the first month help catch issues early.
• Balance information flow: Too much information at once can lead to stress and fatigue for new hires.

Effective onboarding demonstrates to new employees that you value their experience and invest in their success. A positive first impression lays the foundation for lasting employee engagement throughout their tenure at your company.

4. Invest in Professional Development

Employees value growth opportunities more than ever. Learning programs help organizations retain their top talent.

Professional development encompasses various initiatives that enable employees to acquire new skills, maintain certifications, or pursue additional qualifications. These programs come in many forms, such as team projects, mentorship, self-paced study, webinars, workshops, or formal courses. Smart organizations don’t just react to skills gaps. They make employee growth a strategic business priority that delivers measurable returns.

Studies show 53% of workers would stay longer at their current job if they had access to development opportunities. Young workers rank learning opportunities as their third-most-valuable job perk. 

These steps help create effective learning initiatives:

• Assess organizational needs: Talk to managers and survey employees about their training interests
• Vary learning methods: Use different formats like mentoring, cross-training, micro-learning, and formal courses
• Measure program effectiveness: Look at completion rates, productivity improvements, and promotion statistics
• Create learning communities: Choose learning ambassadors to promote programs and provide feedback

The numbers tell the story—organizations get $33 back for every dollar they invest in employee development. Your commitment to continuous learning turns regular training into a powerful way to keep talent.

5. Create Clear Career Pathways

Career growth limitations contribute to employee turnover rates, with 63% of workers who left their jobs citing this as their primary reason. A McKinsey study supports this, showing that career development gaps are the top reason people quit.

Career paths provide employees with a clear roadmap for advancement within your organization. These paths outline the exact skills and milestones required to advance between roles. Team members can clearly see their growth opportunities. We aligned individual goals with the organization’s needs, which helps bridge the gap between current roles and future career aspirations.

Here’s what it takes to build effective career paths:

• Look at what you have: Check your current career paths and spot any gaps in fairness or what works
• Build clear systems: Spell out what skills people need to move up at each level
• Show the opportunities: Use tools that match people’s skills with available roles
• Think about two tracks: Create separate paths for managers and specialists

Organizations with clear career paths keep talent more often. This reduces expensive turnover costs and encourages employees to take a more active role in their work. For instance, an insurance call center that promotes agents to senior roles, quality assurance, or even underwriting positions based on performance clearly demonstrates long-term value, motivating them to stay and excel.

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6. Train Managers to Retain Talent

Your managers play a crucial role in keeping your employees. Research from the Boston Consulting Group shows that great managers can reduce the risk of employee turnover by 72% and increase their likelihood of staying by 3.2 times. This makes developing your managers a cornerstone of any strategy to keep talent.

Manager training programs should build these vital skills:

• Authentic leadership: Leaders who stay honest and fair build trust that keeps employees around.
• Emotional intelligence: Learning empathy and self-awareness helps create safe spaces for teams.
• Communication and feedback: Open talks about career growth make employees want to stay.

The link between good people management and employee retention speaks for itself. Bad relationships with bosses make employees head for the exit–people quit their bosses, not their organizations. 

7. Foster a Culture of Recognition

Employee recognition fulfills a basic human need at work. A culture that regularly acknowledges employee contributions serves as a powerful retention tool at minimal cost and with significant benefits.

Recognition culture transforms occasional appreciation into a systematic approach, where acknowledgment becomes an integral part of daily operations. Create an environment where employees feel genuinely valued for their contributions instead of just completing tasks. These cultures emerge through deliberate design and ongoing reinforcement.

Building an effective recognition culture requires the following steps:

• Provide timely, specific feedback rather than generic praise.
• Establish peer recognition systems. Organizations with formal recognition programs see less voluntary turnover.
• Customize appreciation based on individual priorities, as employees prefer feeling valued over a pay increase.
• Connect recognition to values—for example, link acknowledgment to company values or team goals to reinforce what matters most.
• Make it visible. Dedicate spaces (physical or virtual) to celebrate achievements.
• Promote inclusivity. Recognition should reach employees of all functions, locations, and experiences.

Compelling data support the connection between recognition and retention. Well-recognized employees are less likely to leave their company within two years. Note that consistent recognition requires minimal investment but delivers remarkable returns in engagement, performance, and loyalty.

8. Support Work-Life Balance

A remarkable 93% of employees prioritize work-life balance ahead of other job factors in today’s market. Organizations must create environments where personal and professional lives blend naturally to keep their talented employees.

Work-life balance enables employees to manage their professional duties and personal life effectively without sacrificing either. This balance isn’t just a nice perk – it plays a crucial role in employee retention.

Here’s what makes balance policies work:

• Remote work options that cut out commute stress
• Flextime that lets employees pick their hours within set limits
• Regular mental health days with stress management tools
• Training managers to spot signs of burnout

Companies with strong work-life balance policies experience lower turnover and lower costs of productivity. Organizations that prioritize balance create supportive workplaces that keep their teams motivated and prevent burnout.

9. Encourage Internal Mobility

Career development within your organization is a powerful way to retain employees, yet many employers miss this opportunity. Your employees who switch roles internally have a 75% chance of staying more than two years, compared to just 56% who remain in the same role.

People stay almost twice as long at organizations with strong mobility programs. When you promote from within, you reduce hiring risks because you already know the candidate’s strengths and cultural fit. 

A successful internal mobility system needs:

• Well-laid-out job rotation chances between departments
• Clear internal job boards where employees can easily find opportunities
• Smart tools that connect employee skills and tacit knowledge with possible roles
• Managers trained to support their team’s growth, even when it means losing them to another department

Internal mobility encompasses both upward and lateral employee movement across different roles within your company. Career growth doesn’t always mean climbing straight up–employees can grow by learning new skills across various departments or functions. This approach helps fill skill gaps and gives employees new challenges without losing them to other organizations.

10. Offer Meaningful Benefits

Benefits packages are powerful tools that go way beyond simple compensation. MetLife reports that 61% of employees consider benefits their key deciding factor for job offers. Organizations providing quality benefits see turnover rates 27% lower than those with minimal or no health coverage.

Today’s competitive job market prompts employees to carefully review comprehensive benefits packages before making career moves. Research shows 73% of workers stick around longer with organizations that provide quality health benefits. 

Your workforce needs tailored benefits that match their needs:

• Ask your team what benefits they prefer
• Look at age groups; each generation values different perks
• Set up flexible spending; HSAs, FSAs, or HRAs let employees manage their healthcare costs
• Create stipend options; give employees budget-friendly choices they can control
• Track what works; check which benefits your team actually uses

Remember that flexibility matters differently across age groups. About 79% of younger staff members want flexible work options. Baby Boomers tend to focus more on retirement and healthcare benefits.

11. Build a Strong Company Culture

Your retention strategies succeed or fail based on company culture. Organizations that build strong, values-based cultures perform 40% better in business metrics—including growth, breakthroughs, and employee retention. 

Company culture encompasses shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and norms that shape how teams interact and collaborate. This invisible yet powerful force shapes decision-making styles and determines how comfortable employees feel when sharing opinions. Culture reflects your organization’s personality and explains the “why” behind your brand.

These strategies boost retention through culture:

• Start with leadership commitment. Leaders must genuinely demonstrate stated values.
• Create listening mechanisms, regular surveys, and a feedback channel to help monitor culture health.
• Promote psychological safety by ensuring team members feel secure enough to voice their concerns freely.
• Encourage authentic interaction. Create water cooler channels in digital spaces or plan social events that build community.
• Celebrate achievements and acknowledge both work milestones and personal moments.

Harvard Business Review shows that organizations with strong corporate cultures grow revenue 4x faster than those with weaker cultures. On the other hand, a toxic workplace remains one of the primary reasons employees leave, while a positive environment fosters a sense of belonging and loyalty.

12. Provide Continuous Feedback

Annual reviews are becoming outdated as organizations move toward regular conversations with employees. Gallup data show that 80% of workers who received meaningful feedback in the last week are more actively engaged in their work.

Continuous feedback is a well-established approach where managers give immediate, ongoing input throughout the year instead of waiting for annual reviews. This method creates a feedback and learning culture that embeds regular communication into daily operations. Traditional evaluations focus on past performance, but continuous feedback gives immediate guidance that employees can apply to current projects.

These practices help create feedback systems that work:

• Give input quickly. Feedback loses its value when delayed.
• Talk about specific behaviors instead of making general comments.
• Build two-way conversations where employees share their thoughts.
• Schedule regular check-ins to discuss progress and adjustments.

Regular feedback affects retention in several ways. Employees who receive weekly input show higher engagement rates. Timely recognition helps workers feel valued and deepens their commitment to organizational goals. Constructive guidance prevents errors from building up, boosting productivity.

13. Promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I)

Organizations with truly inclusive cultures are twice as likely to exceed financial targets and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes. We have a long way to go, but we can build on this progress in workplace DE&I across most sectors.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) includes policies and initiatives that promote representation and participation, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. Successful DE&I strategies go beyond compliance and become strategic tools that improve employee satisfaction, participation, and retention rates.

14. Empower Employees with Autonomy

Autonomy means employees can make decisions and take ownership of their work. This goes beyond just flexibility and covers six different types:

• Schedule autonomy: Choosing when and where to work
• Task autonomy: Determining how to perform assignments
• Decision-making autonomy: Setting priorities and allocating resources
• Creative autonomy: Learning new ideas and approaches
• Career autonomy: Setting personal development goals
• Social autonomy: Choosing collaboration methods

Workplace autonomy directly affects retention. To create an autonomous workplace, consider the following steps: 

1. Clear decision-making frameworks show employees which decisions they can make on their own
2. Balance accountability with independence by setting clear expectations while allowing flexible execution
3. Work connected to purpose helps employees take more initiative
4. Managers should learn to support rather than micromanage
5. Recognition of successful independent work reinforces desired behaviors

Workplace autonomy is a powerful yet often overlooked way to keep employees. Employees who have autonomy tend to be more satisfied with their jobs. In addition, organizations with higher employee engagement see lower absenteeism rates and even higher customer retention.

15. Implement Employee Wellness Programs

Employee wellness investments yield measurable retention results. Wellness programs are initiatives that help employees maintain good health through preventive measures and healthy lifestyle choices. These programs aim to reduce healthcare costs, increase productivity, and foster a healthier workplace. A well-run wellness program enables staff to take charge of their health and enhances their job satisfaction.

Successful wellness programs usually include:

• Physical wellness: Fitness centers, walking groups, health screenings, nutrition guidance
• Mental health support: Stress management, mindfulness sessions, employee assistance programs (EAPs)
• Financial wellness: Help with budgeting, debt reduction, and saving strategies
• Social connection: Team activities that build friendships while improving health

Innovative organizations offer flexible program choices, allowing employees to select benefits that align with their personal health goals. Wellness initiatives take a comprehensive approach to employee health, encompassing physical, mental, financial, and social aspects. This creates an environment where people thrive, rather than just getting by.

16. Use Data to Monitor Retention Trends

Evidence-based approaches change employee retention efforts from reactive processes into strategic advantages. HR teams can identify potential turnover problems before resignations happen with predictive analytics. This creates a fundamental change in how organizations keep their top talent.

HR leaders can spot patterns and predict future behavior through workforce data analysis. They no longer rely on gut instinct but use evidence-based information to focus on strategic interventions. 

Risk models that analyze engagement trends and performance data help identify signs of disengagement. Clear processes turn information into action through structured intervention plans and manager accountability. Organizations that follow these methods have significantly reduced attrition and saved millions of dollars.

Knowledge Sharing as the Key to Employee Retention

Examining engagement scores, identifying potential leavers, and analyzing how long people stay helps focus improvements where they matter most, providing direct insights into how to enhance employee retention. Additionally, the way organizations share knowledge is one of the most important factors. Teams make better decisions when company knowledge becomes available to everyone.

Organizations that utilize enterprise knowledge while enabling their workforce to gain loyal customers and long-term employees. These retention efforts do more than keep people – they revolutionize workplaces where both employees and businesses succeed together.

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About the Author

Betsy Anderson

Betsy leads the customer success and implementation teams at Bloomfire and is a Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) from KM Institute. Passionate about the people side of knowledge engagement and knowledge sharing, she brings real-world experience in tackling the challenges companies face with knowledge management.