3 Ways to Retain your Top Talent

After investing so much time and effort into hiring the best employees, of course you’d want to retain them!

However, retaining skilled workers in the tech industry in Malaysia can be a challenging task due to the high demand for their expertise. Studies show that majority of Southeast Asian tech companies are struggling to retain talent - and their top 3 challenges are:

1. Compensation

2. Mismatch between skills and experience

3. Employer branding

If you’re facing similar issues, here are some effective strategies that you can implement to retain your talented employees:

1. Make your employees feel like an asset to your company

Keep your employees happy! Make them feel secure and valued by letting them set goals and listen to them as often as possible. You should encourage open communication so they can speak up without fear of retribution. While it might seem small, creating a culture where employees can freely speak up – within reason – can keep employees engaged and wanting to stick around.

Take a look at Apple, in the past 2 years they’ve seen an improvement in employee retention rate by 28% ! So, what’s their secret?

“Value your workers, and show them that they are valued”

- Angela Ahrendts, Apple Inc. Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores

As a huge global corporation, Apple values employee feedback to stay connected with their workforce! They prioritize engaging with every employee, no matter their location or position. They conducted ‘stay interviews’ (asking employees why they’re staying) or why they’d leave. The simple act of reaching out and empowering people with a voice, makes them more likely to stay!

2. Offer the ability to grow

It may be tempting to keep your best employees in the same position with the same duties. And you may ask - if they’re performing above expectations, why change what they’re doing?

Remember, employees who do the same tasks, again and again, can also grow bored. If they ask for more or to change things up, entertain their idea seriously! True empowerment for employees comes from knowledge. Investing in upskilling your employees by providing them with additional education and training in their field not only boosts their job satisfaction and retention - but also strengthens your company as a whole!

Another alternative is to encourage or send employees to participate in tech-related events to expand their knowledge. Like the story of Mouhannad, he was able to find solutions to his problems by networking with other developers. This fosters a sense of community and improves employee well-being. When employees are connected to a forum, their problems become everyone's problem too, and they’ll feel valued and cared for.

3. Show appreciation and respect

Employees who feel appropriately recognized and rewarded by workplaces are more likely to stay! Hence, you need to make employee recognition a priority to recognise your employees’ achievements.

There are multiple ways to recognize and reward your employees, but it’s important to make sure you prioritize both:

Social recognition

It feels good to not only be recognized for our work, but to be publicly recognized, as it helps everyone know when others are appreciated, too.

Monetary rewards

Financial rewards, whether in the form of straightforward cash, gift cards or other perks such as paid time off, are among the most important and most successful rewards you can offer an employee. Consider asking employees open-ended questions about what they’d like in terms of rewards, too!

Google is a good example of a company that implemented both incentives. They created a program called ‘gThanks’, in which employees can give recognition to their co-workers for a job well done! This recognition program goes even further by allowing staff to nominate each other through the peer-bonuses program, whereby colleagues can receive a bonus of US$175. How cool is that?

Retention can be challenging, but with the right strategies and initiatives in place, it’s possible to create a strong and loyal workforce!

Need more advice? Let us help you! Send an enquiry to us here or email our professionals at viknesh@trii.io

TRIIIO is a Malaysian recruitment firm focused on partnering with companies to find and recruit top talent and build their Software Engineering teams. For more information on how we can help you recruit Software Engineers in this candidate tight market, visit our service page.

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