BFS Spotlight: Elevate Your Employee Retention With This One Key Tip

This article comes from our partners over at Boutique Fitness Solutions, a company dedicated to helping boutique fitness businesses make the most of their potential.

Want to learn more about BFS? You can do so here.

In our quest to address a century-old challenge – hiring and retaining employees – we need to look at the challenge with a new and unique perspective. Before doing that, however, let’s lay the foundation for creating a strong culture that not only draws new talent but also keeps your existing talent engaged. When approaching the issue of employee satisfaction, always remember to start with these five critical needs:

1. Prioritize employee development
2. Provide a sense of purpose
3. Show employees that you care
4. Consider their opinions
5. Focus on each employee’s unique strengths

No matter what you do or change within your business, always remember those five core tenets – without those, you’ll never be able to keep quality employees around for long.

But how do you solidify your employees as long-term team players?

This article from the Harvard Business Review is an excellent insight into the modern world of employee retention. It explores a wide range of studies and experiments, finding that what people want from their jobs is shifting from pay to something more nuanced: purpose.

In short, this is what you need to do as an employer:

Don’t just give your employees what they want, give them what they need to thrive.

There are several studies to support this perspective, and it makes a lot of logical sense.

A lot of businesses frequently resort to asking employees what they need to make their jobs worthwhile. While open communication is essential, you also need to strongly consider what benefits you can offer that they can’t yet see – primarily long-term development and training incentives. Individuals are adept at identifying their short-term desires, but they may require additional guidance from employers to discern what they need for long-term contentment within the team.

In the fitness and wellness industry, employers have traditionally offered enticing short-term benefits such as flexible scheduling, free fitness classes, and a sense of community. However, identifying and supporting the long-term needs of your employees, such as career growth opportunities and purpose-driven work, could hold the key to hiring and retaining your dream team.

So, how do we strike a balance between the short-term desires and long-term needs of our teams for optimal employee attraction, engagement, and retention?

Take a holistic approach to find balance among these four factors:

1. Material Offerings: Address short-term wants like compensation, benefits, flexibility, schedules, and perks.

2. Opportunities to develop and grow: Provide employees with continuous opportunities for career development.

3. Connection and Community: Fulfill short-term desires by creating a sense of community, which also yields long-term benefits. As described by the Harvard Business Review, this involves feeling appreciated and valued for who you are, a sense of mutual accountability, and social relationships. These emotions can foster increased loyalty and appreciation.

4. Meaning and Purpose: This long-term factor has been a recurring theme in BFS content for years and remains as relevant as ever. Continually articulate your studio’s mission and purpose to your team, transforming their work from a mere “job” into a fulfilling “career.”

Investing time in demonstrating to both new and current employees how your organization supports and develops their skills, both professionally and personally, in the long term can save you the trouble of frequent rehiring down the road.

Read More: The Ultimate Employee Retention Guide

BFS is the Premier Peer Network & Information Hub for businesses in an ever-evolving world. Our mission is to bring together the industry’s most forward-thinking leaders and best-in-class resources to help business owners build successful businesses, increase profits, and learn to adapt to their customers’ ever-changing needs.  In short, our mission is to educate, connect, and empower boutique fitness & wellness business owners so that they can achieve their business goals—and in turn, create a healthier, more connected world.

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