Over time, businesses and organisations tend to organically build up the best teams to get the necessary work done. It’s rare that you’ll hire all your ideal employees at the same time, and it’s even more rare that all of your best performers will stay for the long run.

Most people can be replaced, but this tends to be a costly process and can really set the rest of your team back. Long term employees have more specific experience and work more seamlessly with your existing processes, so how can you discourage them from eventually looking elsewhere for work?

1) Have a strong induction process

Research shows that going through a specific introductory program when joining a new employer increases the retention rate for new employees by nearly 60%. Making people less anxious and overwhelmed when they start a new job makes them retain new information more easily and pick up skills faster, so you should plan a consistent method of doing this.

2) Keep the process going

A new employee will not be in the same position as a veteran after just a week, or even a few months. If you really need to improve your retention rate, you need to focus on maintaining and building a connection with new staff for a long time after they first join.

3) Give people new career options

It’s natural for your employees, like everyone else’s, to occasionally feel the desire to go into a completely new area. The best way to combat this is to show people that it’s not necessary to leave your organisation in order to find fulfilment in a new area. Consider a system or resource that asks employees what their career goals are and offers alternative paths within your business that they might be interested in.

4) Communicate and connect

As a leader, manager or HR professional, you may not be able to communicate effectively with every employee using the exact same approach. Long-term employees may need to hear different messages to keep them motivated, as they are looking at things from a different perspective than those who are new to the workforce.

5) Add a sense of fun

Don’t forget that your team should be enjoying themselves at work, including when you’re trying to engage them in self-development and stop them taking their talent elsewhere. You may actually be able to turn self-training into a multiplayer game within your organisation, which gives the whole process a fun edge and keeps players interested. This might be a large investment, but it has proved a hugely successful strategy in some cases.

We hear a lot about the importance of good communication, but within organisations it rarely comes naturally to everyone. This is evidenced by the fact that more than 60% of office workers still cite communication as an area that their business fails at.

Why isn’t it taken seriously? It’s perhaps more a case of the nuances of great communication being difficult to understand and enforce across a workplace. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t try your absolute hardest to get it right. Here are the top 10 reasons why businesses absolutely have to communicate well, or risk failure.

1) Customer service is better when businesses communicate well internally, because employees are more informed about products, services and processes. It allows them to be honest and develop more trust with clients.

2) Expectations are clearer so your team will know what they need to do in order to be considered productive and successful in their job.

3) People that know how to communicate make much more efficient teams. Collaboration without understanding will usually lead to wasted time.

4) Company values will be upheld and taken seriously if people actually understand what they are and know how to communicate those in everything they do.

5) Businesses using the most advanced and up-to-date communication channels tend to have better-informed employees, since they have instant access to relevant information. This also creates a good impression with external parties, if they can see you keep up with the times.

6) You can avoid confusion and mistakes when people understand what’s happening. Simple errors in communication can lead to bigger problems down the line.

7) When changes are happening in a business (and this happens often for many organisations), employees sometimes need extra support. Making sure people understand why things are changing will increase their trust in you.

8) An open and transparent culture will help you identify and resolves a huge range of issues much earlier on, compared to in a situation where tensions are underlying and communication is hindered.

9) Communicating regularly about important issues will help people in your team feel like they are valued. This in turn helps with employee retention and productivity.

10) Maintaining an engaged and productive workforce is really the main goal of internal communication strategies, so if you get it right you should experience this for yourself.