With the Big Resignation and labour shortages affecting the VCSE sector, some organisations are looking at how best to retain valuable team members. Keeping your best employees is strategically savvy, your “enthusiastic stayers” are one of your best assets.

The two top reasons employees are leaving their current employment, are for higher wages and to seek remote working options. As well as retaining some elements of remote work at least on a hybrid basis, employees appear to be willing to listen to requests from employees about increased autonomy in planning a work life balance. Retention bonuses as well as permanent increases in salary are also being offered by some organisations to elevate workplaces to become employers of choice.

One major care charity is giving a second pay rise in 6 months to frontline staff amid the recruitment crisis. Community Integrated Care announced that salaries for its support workers would next month rise to £10 an hour in England and £11 an hour in Scotland, a pay increase of approximately 3 per cent.

Mark Adams, chief executive of CIC, said he was “proud” that the charity was in a position to offer extra pay. He said that “this crisis is neither slowing, or going”. It’s hoped the wage increase will encourage staff members to stay with the charity. With 112,000 vacancies across the sector, charities and other providers faced recruitment challenges on an “unprecedented scale”.

We all need to ensure we are doing our best as an employer to support and develop teams, and of course to avoid high staff turnover. Are you offering bonuses, increased wages, hybrid working or perhaps more creative ways of keeping staff engaged and retained?

We will look at retention and other elements of employment best practice in our upcoming training course Being a Good Employer. The next session is on 11 May 2022, 13:00 to 16:30. Sign-up here.