If you’re an effective, motivated leader, you want to hold on to your best talent for as long as you can. But often, employees who are top performers are usually the first ones to find better options. This is destabilizing to an organization — and costly. If you want to improve your employee retention, consider the following factors that impact the decision to stay or quit. 

1. Appreciation

Appreciation doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be simple as a smile and telling an employee (in specific terms) that they’ve done a great job. Keeping appreciative vibrations flowing is a great way to improve general employee morale, too. Take the extra step and find out what specifically motivates each of your employees to make your gestures even more sincere and powerful. 

2. Compensation

It goes without saying: Compensation needs to be commensurate with employee skill, performance, and seniority. Compensation means more than money, though. If your budget doesn’t allow for much of a salary increase, look at other ways you can add value. It might be access to mentoring, a more flexible schedule, or a title change.

3. Conditions

Not being overworked is one of the key factors affecting employee retention, particularly when it comes to top performers. If you find that you’re assigning them greater workloads and increased responsibilities, then some kind of promotion should be on the table as soon as possible. A raise is ideal, but if you need to put that off, a more prestigious job title that puts your worker on the road to a raise is the next best thing. 

4. Challenge

To keep your highly motivated workers engaged, challenge them. Team members need meaningful, novel tasks to keep them interested and push them out of their comfort zone. Want to see your best employees excel? Give them goals that take effort and that hit the sweet spot between their established skills and the areas they need to grow. Stimulating tasks boost employee retention.  

5. Development

If you want to retain your high performers and attract new ones, make high-level development your focus. Excellent employees want more than to learn new skills; they also want to have opportunities to add to those skillsets to set them up for unique opportunities. Even your top performers need places to grow. 

Retaining good employees requires showing them that they matter. Put these ideas into action to keep your workforce stable and satisfied.