By Innocent Hadebe
Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. AS Zimbabwean businesses continue to thrive with entrepreneurial vibrancy and technological ambition, the country still grapples with a stubborn challenge of brain drain.
Bright minds, educated at great cost, often leave for “greener pastures”.
This exodus is more than just staffing concern. It is a threat to continuity, innovation, and national development.
Faced with this situation, organisations need to adopt a mindset to do business differently and productively.
They need to adopt a resilient pipeline approach.
A resilient pipeline means more than having enough personnel.
It’s about having leaders at every level, teams that are upskilled, empowered and a clear strategy to develop the next generation, before the current one burns out.
The answer lies in building systems which are strong that talent would prefer to stay, and systems so smart that they can thrive even if some do leave.
The management has to come up with employee retention strategies to compel workers to stay put at their organia\sations.
Some of the strategies are:
On-boarding process — Employees should not only be taught about the nature of their jobs and their roles, but they should be taught about the organisational culture and the vision and purpose.
As they are oriented they should be informed about the opportunities that lie ahead and how their stay at the organisation will contribute to their economic and social life.
An organisation should be viewed as a sanctuary by employees and this could be done through offering wellness services such counselling for stress management and a guide on retirement plans.
As a leader, it is important to be approachable and have an open- door policy.
Workers should be at peace that they can come to you with suggestions, views and concerns at any time.
As a leader, you must promote timely positive and constructive communication across the entire organisational system.
Continuous feedback on performance — Feedback could be provided through review meetings.
Moreover, the supervisor should offer constructive feedback so that they will not feel demoralised.
Through such meetings, the manager could engage the employee to have visibility and knowledge about their short and long-term professional goals and offer constructive advice for their career development.
Training and development — As part of continuous feedback on performance, you can help employees identify skills gap and areas of professional growth.
Up-skilling your employees aids them in gaining new skills and competencies as business requirements evolve.
Allow your employees to attend workshops and provide tuition reimbursement or pay for their career advancement.
A succession plan should be available and this is an effective way of skills retention and an impactful method to encourage professional growth and grooming future managers.
Flexible work arrangements — There are some employees who prefer to work from home, but if there are strict working conditions, that might even compel some of the employees to resign.
Employers must come up with a flexible work schedule to create a conducive work environment.
Effective change management — Employees become anxious when a change is implemented. Some fear losing their jobs or to be reassigned to other business units or work environments they are not used to.
During these uncertain times, employees look to the management for insight and reassurance about their jobs.
Regular meetings must be held to keep the workforce informed on the latest information about the change programme and during such meetings, allow workers to ask as many questions as possible to ease anxiety.
Team work — As a manager you should promote team-work by creating opportunities for collaboration and accommodating individual culture and work style.
Incentives — The company must pay its workforce a competitive salary.
Employers need to evaluate and adjust salaries regularly.
There are some companies which are not making big profits.
In such a scenario, it is prudent to compensate workers with bonuses and profit-sharing when the company posts good profits.
These are some of the strategies that could help in easing the pressure of brain drain.
lBuild what the market can’t offer
The company through its marketing manager should identify new segments and unmet customer needs.
They should develop a unique solution that solves these problems.
Additionally they should be innovative and design a product that specifically addresses the specific unmet needs you identified.
lInstitutionalise learning and succession
An organisation should establish a system and culture which compels employees to embrace a culture of continuous development and learning.
This will enable the organisation to adapt and respond to the changing business environment for continuity.
Source: NewsDay
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