Team Retention & Culture Tips

Running a business or team can be hard work but it’s even harder if your team are dissatisfied and you lose team members as a result. The key to retention lies in making people feel valued, secure and having a great team culture - here are a few tips that will help you achieve that:

1. Pick a place (cafe/bar) to hang out with your team and make it 'yours’, go regularly. Remote teams could rent a Minecraft server or make use of things like gather.town.

2. Buy a few drinks during these outings; the cost is trivial, and it's appreciated

3. Use those opportunities to chat to your team about their work, people tend to be more open when they’re outside the office.

4. Don’t have alcohol in the office, it’s not fair on people who don’t drink or struggle to control it.

5. Invest time in onboarding new members to the team, spend a couple of hours with them 1:1 on their first day and take them out to lunch with their immediate colleagues.

6. Simplify things where-ever possible, don’t get tied-up in unnecessary process, people hate it.

7. Develop mantras that align with your preferred way of doing things. One of mine is, 'It takes twice as much work to fix something broken than it does to get it right in the first place.'

8. Celebrate people’s birthdays, buy them a cake!

9. Avoid regular bonuses they tend to become an expectation and if you need to suspend them it will create dissatisfaction.

10. Celebrate every win (and maybe even the losses) together.

11. Be creative with the things you do for your team. It will magnify the value in their minds.

12. Collect memorabilia from the things you’ve done together and put it on display.

13. Reduce friction by providing quality equipment such as stationary computers, writing materials, books, etc.

14. Invest in good chairs for people who sit for extended periods, comfort is crucial for productivity. Reduce cost and be environmentally conscious with wantdontwant.com.

15. Maintain transparency about the business even during challenging times. Guesswork breeds insecurity; being honest and outlining your plans reassures.

Please get in contact if you have any tips to add and I’ll add them to this page with a credit.

Notes:

Celebrations should be proportionate to the achievement, such as a nice lunch for a medium-sized win, ad-hoc drinks for a loss, or a day out of the office for something spectacular.

Try to organise something special at least once a year, being creative in proportion to the level of success at the time. Some of the things I’ve done in the past included:

• A trip to Alton Towers via a nuclear bunker in a VIP coach.

• An endurance go-karting tournament at Wembley stadium

• Buying giant Valentines cards for all the team and customising them to say things like “I Love Your Work”.

Bonuses - I’d advise tying bonuses to exceptional business results unless they are reasonably affordable. For example a small bonus at Christmas will be appreciated and shouldn’t break the bank.