How SMEs Can Retain Top Talent When A Salary Increase Is Not Possible

How SMEs Can Retain Top Talent When A Salary Increase Is Not Possible

Global lockdowns have affected a lot of businesses. Small to medium enterprises, Mom n’ Pop business, and Start-ups are among the businesses who took the hardest financial hit. Most of these organizations aren’t in the best commercial position to retain their top talent. However, they also cannot afford staff turnover and would need to increase retention.

Making sure that staff feels validated and rewarded for a job well done is an important part of keeping your best people. It is also a great way to attract top new talent as a good reward system improves your businesses’ reputation as a stellar place to work. When employees feel properly rewarded, they are happier and generally more productive. They also opt to stay with the organization for longer.

A salary increase isn’t the only way for your business to reward and retain your top talent. If traditional salary options are not possible in this financial climate, you can still reward your employees with non-monetary benefits. Here are a few examples of non-monetary incentives:

Work From Home Arrangement

In industries who can afford to allow their employees to work from home, this working arrangement has been mandated to help enable physical or social distancing. This helps quarantine the workforce and reduce the population of people who can be at risk of catching the Covid-19 virus. Once the restrictions were lifted, the workforce was allowed to go back to work and back to the office. For organizations who are able to allow their employees to work from home, this arrangement can be one of the non-monetary benefits used to reward top performers. 

Flexible Work Schedule

Allowing your top talent to manage their schedule, within reasonable limits, can also be a non-monetary incentive. For example, staff can be allowed to start work anytime from 6 am to 10 am as long as they complete the number of work hours needed for the day. Another flexible work arrangement is to allow employees the ability to start and stop work whenever they want within their daily schedule as long as the4y are available for team meetings and collaborative sessions. This could prove especially practical for parents who have young children at home.  

Medical Benefits

This one could arguably be a very popular employee retention benefit. Understandably, employees would want to receive the best health care. Employers could offer to cover an employee’s health insurance or at least subsidize a portion of staff’s private health insurance. Employers can even offer to extend healthcare coverage to an employee’s family members. 

Wellness Packages

Because of recent events, there is a growing interest in mental health and wellness programs. Employers can offer access to therapy or counseling sessions. They can even offer access to physical wellness programs like gym memberships, training sessions that are supervised by personal trainers online, massage sessions, chiropractor sessions, etc. Coaching sessions from financial advisors also count under wellness coaching.

Have you used non-monetary benefits to reward or retain top talent in your company? How did it work out? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp