What Employers Can Do to Better Support Their Working Parents

Employers always are looking for ways to support their employees. This improves productivity, performance, and retention.

One key area of support is for working parents. Because most employees have families, they make up a significant part of the workforce.

Working parents often deal with issues that affect their professional performance. Examples include taking time off to care for a sick child and needing to finish work early to handle family responsibilities.

As a result, employers who provide accommodations for working parents are more attractive to employees and job seekers. Taking small steps can result in a substantial impact on your organization with little impact on the bottom line.

Choose among these methods to provide support for your working parents.

Talk About Working Parents’ Needs

Find out more about what your working parents want help with most. You may want to begin with a survey to understand their issues, concerns, and suggestions for help. Then, you can use this information to begin discussions between working parents and management about methods to increase support.

You may want to identify a specific issue that many working parents face. Then, you could encourage managers to speak with their employees for more details. The managers could meet with HR and leadership to share feedback and discuss implementation methods.

Create a Parents’ Network

Encourage working parents to share ideas, provide support, and organize family-friendly activities. This may include creating an email chain for parents to swap out gently used children’s clothing. Or, parents might provide tips to ease the stress of raising children while working full-time.

Having this network helps fill working parents’ wants and needs by connecting them with the right individuals at the right time. You may want to create a dedicated intranet page or Slack channel to encourage working parents to join the network.

Provide Flexibility

Offer employees a flexible schedule and options for how they work. Examples include working remotely, hybrid, flextime, part-time, or having a compressed workweek.

You may want to make accommodations for when working parents’ children start school or change their childcare routines. This reduces the stress of fitting in work around childcare. It also increases productivity and retention.

Looking for Additional Advice?

Working parents appreciate help supporting their personal and professional needs. Talking about and accommodating working parents’ needs, creating a working parents’ network, and providing flexibility are effective methods to provide this support. This increases employee engagement, productivity, and performance. It also increases employee attraction and retention.

For additional advice to better support your team’s working parents, reach out to the professionals at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Contact us today.

 

How a Strong Company Culture Can Lead to Better Retention

Your company’s culture is one of its biggest assets. It shows what your organization stands for and serves as a guide for employee interactions.

Having a well-developed culture can encourage the best talent to work for you. Once these employees become part of your organization, they are likely to remain for an extended time.

The longer your employees remain, the higher your retention rates. This lowers the amount of time and money spent on hiring, which improves your bottom line.

Find out how you can develop a strong company culture to improve your employee retention rates.

Business Guidance  

Displaying a strong mission, vision, and values provides employees with a sense of guidance and security. It shows what you stand for as a company. This helps attract employees who align with your culture.

Employees with values in line with your company’s values tend to make better business decisions. This typically aligns with your company’s vision and business strategy.

Be sure to advertise your culture and exhibit it in everything your organization does. For instance, regularly talk about your company’s vision and strategy. Include what these topics mean for different teams. Helping your employees better understand the company can improve engagement, motivation, and retention.

Include your company values when evaluating employee performance. This can improve engagement.

Flexible Work Arrangements

Offering remote or hybrid work and a flexible schedule helps your employees manage work-life balance. Letting them handle their personal needs during the workday helps lower stress. This reduces the odds of experiencing burnout.

Your employees may desire additional paid time off (PTO), stipends for child care, or paid parental or personal leave. Providing these accommodations shows you care about your employees’ well-being.

Talk with your employees about individual accommodations they may need to fit their personal circumstances. Increased flexibility typically leads to increased retention.

Performance Recognition

Regularly thanking your employees for their efforts and results helps them feel appreciated. This tends to elevate engagement, productivity, and retention.

Performance recognition should take a variety of forms. This may include a hand-written thank-you note, verbal praise during an individual or team meeting, or a mention on the company intranet.

Regularly point out your employees’ contributions to benefit the organization. Include each employee’s specific actions, their results, and how they impacted the business. Provide bonuses, raises, or promotions when appropriate.

Looking for Accounting and Finance Professionals?

Employees want to work for companies that have a strong culture. You can promote your culture by using it to guide employees to make business decisions. You also can offer flexible work arrangements and provide performance recognition to increase the attractiveness of your workplace. All of these factors contribute to your retention rates.

If you need help adding accounting and finance professionals to your team, talk with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Learn more today.

The Importance of Flexible Scheduling and How to Make It Work for Your Business

Companies that offer flexible schedules help accommodate their employees’ different lifestyles. This is becoming increasingly important as a method to attract quality accounting and finance candidates. Because more job seekers want control over their work-life integration, your team should be able to set their own work hours. Fortunately, implementation can be accomplished in a few steps.

Discover some benefits of offering a flexible schedule and how to implement it for your accounting and finance team.

Increased Work-Life Integration

Your team members appreciate being able to schedule their work around their personal lives. They can participate in their children’s school activities, run errands, and take care of household responsibilities while fitting in their work. This helps reduce stress and the potential for burnout.

Enhanced Engagement

Employees who work flexible hours remain engaged longer in their work. They feel highly respected and empowered by their manager. As a result, the staff tends to miss fewer days of work, stay focused longer, and accomplish more each day.

Greater Productivity

The ability to set their work hours lets your team members get more done each day. They can work during the times they are most focused and productive. Your employees’ energy levels and concentration levels should be high, allowing more tasks to get finished.

Stronger Employee Retention

Because employees prefer greater control over their time, they appreciate having a flexible schedule. This increases the likelihood of staying with their employer long-term. The longer you keep your staff, the lower your recruitment, onboarding, and training costs.

Additional Top Talent

Offering a flexible schedule encourages the best job seekers to want to work for you. Because many candidates find this perk even more attractive than salary and benefits, you may be able to save money in these areas. You also could attract more applicants than your competitors who do not offer flexible work hours.

Fill Your Team’s Needs

Ask your staff what their interest and needs are for working flexible hours. Find out whether they can effectively function as a team and what would have to happen to make it work. Make sure that your employees would be available when needed for meetings, client discussions, and other responsibilities.

Create a Policy

Develop written rules about flexible scheduling requirements. This may involve having to be at the office or available by phone during certain times. Include how communication with staff will occur when they are not in the office. Make sure the policy is detailed, clear, and non-discriminatory.

Need Top Accounting & Finance Talent?

Implementing a flexible schedule for your accounting and finance team provides many benefits. Productivity, engagement, and work-life integration should increase. This can attract the best candidates and lead to greater employee retention.

When you need to add the best talent to your team, reach out to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. We have the candidates you need to fulfill your business goals.

Importance of Stay Interviews for Employee Retention

The best time to discover what your company can do to keep employees is before they plan to leave. Knowing in advance what causes staff to stay or go is one way to reduce attrition. One of the best ways to retain team members is by conducting stay interviews. Stay interviews let you measure individual job satisfaction and engagement on an ongoing basis. This helps increase employee happiness and reduce turnover. 

Here are several reasons why stay interviews are an effective way to increase employee retention.    

Determine Job Satisfaction 

Implementing stay interviews uncovers how satisfied an employee is with their job. You can find out what is going well and what needs improvement. This lets you address issues before they grow and become out of hand. If you see a similar problem among multiple staff members, you can decide whether organizational changes need to be made.   

Guide Actionable Steps 

Because stay interviews are personalized, they provide an outline of what individual employees need to stay with the company. The information is specific and forward-thinking. Having concrete ideas for how to improve the employee experience makes it easier to eliminate major frustrations and promote retention. 

Allow Time for Improvement 

Taking the time for stay interviews provides the opportunity to implement desired changes. Because employees have not yet considered leaving, there is less pressure to immediately solve the problem. If pay, a promotion, employee training, or something out of your scope comes up, be truthful in your response. For instance, mention that salaries are frozen, or a position is not open. Or discuss adding training opportunities during the next budget cycle so your team member can upskill to secure a promotion.        

Provide Metrics 

Conducting stay interviews lets you create top-level metrics. These supplement secondary and tertiary metrics like employee satisfaction surveys and exit interviews. Reviewing an employee relationship with the company, the project team, and you as their manager shows what you can do to make the relationship better. All of these metrics make up an essential part of your retention strategy.   

Strengthen Company Culture  

Engaging in stay interviews makes the company culture stronger. Staff members appreciate having the opportunity to share their input and have it acted on when possible. This is especially important when major changes are taking place, such as a reduction in force. Individual discussions about job satisfaction help air grievances, potentially keeping your remaining team.   

Hire Accounting and Finance Professionals  

Conducting stay interviews is a productive way to retain employees. Understanding what keeps them working for you or causes them to want to leave provides time to correct the issues before they lead to attrition. It is easier and more profitable to retain staff members than to hire new ones.  

When you are in the market for accounting & finance talent, turn to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. We are dedicated to excellence through education and investing in our staff so we can provide the highest quality of performance for our clients. Learn more today. 

 

4 Reasons Employee Retention Should Be a Top Priority in 2020

Given the costs involved with recruiting, employee retention needs to be among your biggest priorities. An effective retention plan fosters engagement, creates an authentic company culture, and shows you value what your employees care about most. Here are four reasons employee retention needs to be a top priority in 2020.

Employee Retention Conserves Resources

Retaining employees saves time and money. With the salary spent on HR and other departments involved in the hiring process, as well as the reduced productivity and output a new hire brings to a role, you could spend 6-9 months’ salary each time you replace a salaried employee. Even worse, replacing high-level employees can cost in excess of 150% of their salary. More hours spent advertising openings, reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates, and contacting references means less time for other tasks.

Supported Employees Remain Loyal

When you provide employee support as part of your retention plan, staff remain loyal to your company longer. Team members who feel valued, appreciated, and connected to your organization are less likely to leave when recruiters call or opportunities come up. Supported employees feel trusted, autonomous and engaged. They’re responsible for making a variety of decisions, receive constructive real-time feedback and have their contributions recognized. Staff who have support are well compensated, listened to and offered ongoing professional development opportunities. They’re treated with respect, offered opportunities to advance and given challenges to move their career forward.

Employee Turnover Is Contagious

When one employee leaves, others may feel encouraged to follow suit. This is especially true if a new hire starts work and finds out team members have been around for a short period of time. If the staff doesn’t stay very long, new hires might not feel encouraged to stay either. Because people are social creatures, we talk about almost everything. If there are significant issues affecting your team’s cohesion, teammates will discuss it. As problems increase in size because they’re not dealt with, employees feel encouraged to leave for a better work environment. In contrast, being welcomed to the team by employees who’ve been with the company for years and love working for you provide new hires confidence that they made the right decision in coming to work for the business.

Employees Get Stressed by Turnover

Turnover is stressful on your team. This is especially detrimental when teammates’ friends leave the company. Team members often leave because they miss working with people that they spend time with outside the office. Having significant numbers of employees leave affects collaboration and culture. Teammates feel stressed because of pressure to take on additional responsibilities, resulting in less time to perform their own work. To combat this issue, offer remote work options, additional paid time off, and other methods for reducing stress.

Hire Top Accounting and Finance Employees

Hire top finance and accounting professionals through Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. As a leading Rolling Meadows staffing firm, we fill your direct-hire, temp-to-hire and temporary staffing needs. Contact our leading finance recruiters today.