14 Crazy, Out-Of-The-Box Ways to Retain Top Talent

To help you increase employee retention, we asked CEOs and other business leaders this question for their best recommendations. From providing custom benefits to offering concierge services, here are 14 out-of-the-box strategies that business leaders recommend for retaining top talent:

• Provide Custom Benefits
• Celebrate Their Time Off
• Give Free Child Care
• Use Lateral Rotation
• Help With Their Job Search
• Offer Sabbaticals
• Make Outrageous Promises…and Then Keep Them
• Create a Daily “Take a Break” Email Campaign
• Provide Dependent Care Benefits
• Demonstrate Corporate Citizenship
• Offer Equity
• Shorten the Workweek
• Let Employees Work Anywhere for Six Weeks
• Offer Concierge Services

Provide Custom Benefits

When looking to retain top talent, one unique method I’ve come across is customizing a benefit specific to the employee. Outside of a pay increase or promotion, this method shows that a company not only acknowledges the level of the talent, but also cares to keep them happy. Whether it be compensating a gym membership outside of the company list of fitness locations or giving them a more comprehensive health package to include chiropractic care, learning what the employee may want and providing it shows an employee that they’re valued.

Charles Tichenor IV, Disrupter School

Celebrate Their Time Off

Much of retaining talent has to do with culture rather than just perks and benefits, so by celebrating a team member’s “out of the office” time, you can support work-life balance. Studies have shown that many employees, even those who are offered unlimited PTO, do not take full advantage of their vacation time, and this can lead to burnout.

However, by celebrating an employee’s usage of their out of the office time by welcoming them back at a company-wide meeting or encouraging them to share photos with the rest of the group, you can demonstrate to your team that you want their lives to be about more than just work. By outwardly supporting work-life balance, you can encourage your team to take off time when needed, which leads to better work-life balance, less burnout, and the increased retention of your top talent.

Greg Gillman, MuteSix

Give Free Child Care

I know it sounds crazy but parents actually love their children more than work! But taking care of those children can be expensive and challenging. To retain top talent, support them with free Child Care – or at least make it more affordable.

Three options are: (1) Provide on-site care – convenient for those in-office but expensive to manage. (2) Offer dependent care FSAs – this makes care more affordable by drawing from pre-tax dollars. (3) Provide Child Care benefits through TOOTRiS – makes it easy for parents to find and afford Child Care with no HR administration.

Of the three, Child Care benefits are the easiest to implement and provide the greatest return on human capital investment. Studies have also shown that it can increase retention by 75%. That’s crazy!

Kevin Ehlinger, TOOTRiS Child Care on Demand

Use Lateral Rotation

Employees can tire of repetitive tasks. Just because you cannot promote everyone does not mean you cannot change their responsibilities, and rotating positions is an excellent way to maintain interest and retain talent. Most businesses have responsibilities that would be considered of lateral skill level and require equal amounts of time.

By researching which responsibilities within your business structure could support lateral movement, you can create a position rotation schedule that allows your talent to try different responsibilities. Not only does this keep their interest, but builds a skill set within a larger group of people, making your team more flexible and valuable. A lateral movement program can create one of the best ways to build camaraderie and understanding amongst your team while retaining your best talent.

Adelle Archer, Eterneva

Help With Their Job Search

As crazy as it sounds, help them with their job search. If someone at your company is looking to move to greener pastures, offer to help them look around. Maybe even send a few leads their way. If they end up leaving, they probably were going to leave anyway, so no harm done. But there is a good chance that with you offering to help them this way, they might realize just how good they have it right where they are. After all, who but the best boss in the world would help their top talent look for other jobs?

Chris Vaughn, Emjay

Offer Sabbaticals

Some companies offer employees sabbaticals, or extended periods of paid leave, as a way to retain top talent that has been with the company for some time. This may seem very expensive, but it can actually save the company money in the long run by preventing high-performing employees from burning out, leaving, and having to be replaced.

Matthew Ramirez, Paraphrase Tool

Make Outrageous Promises…and Then Keep Them

Something that has worked incredibly well for us, in terms of retaining talent, is making outrageous promises and then following through on them. If we’re being honest, in today’s tight labor market, people can get the standard slate of perks anywhere: good pay, good health benefits, a nice bonus. Everybody provides that. So you need something that keeps people hanging around.

For us, this has been an annual, over-the-top employee relations gift. Basically, if we hit certain financial targets (and we always set the bar very reasonably), we promise something outrageous. One year we chartered a private flight to Las Vegas and got backstage passes to an Elton John concert for every team member. Another year we sent everyone to the Bahamas for 5 nights, all inclusive, for employees and their partners. This past year it was a new, company-branded electric golf cart for every team member. Making outrageous promises with lavish gifts and following through is an awesome way to win loyalty.

John Ross, Test Prep Insight

Create a Daily “Take a Break” Email Campaign

Promote employee wellness and a better work-life balance by creating a “Take a Break” daily team newsletter. Create a company-wide email campaign and automate it to send out quick, digestible health tips to help your team find balance. If you have scheduled break times, send the email 5 minutes before breaks, so your team can get through their current tasks. An employee who maintains a better balance over the long term will stay in their role longer, especially when that balance is encouraged by management.

John Li, Fig Loans

Provide Dependent Care Benefits

To promote a family-friendly environment, some innovative companies are offering dependent care benefits. These include anything from childcare to eldercare, and can really help employees feel supported in their efforts to maintain a healthy work-life balance. You can also make the working environment more conducive for new mothers by providing pump rooms and on-site childcare.

Danielle Bedford, Coople

Demonstrate Corporate Citizenship

One innovative idea is supporting a charity that your own employees choose and setting a time for them to participate in volunteering activities. It’s about making your employees feel good about helping others, fulfilling their social responsibility as part of the community, and leaving them with a sense of pride.

Employees now consider corporate citizenship when applying for a job. They want to work with socially responsible employers who help make a positive difference in the community and society. I think meaningful pursuits like supporting charity and volunteering work are significant drivers to retain employees.

Jeffrey Zhou, Fig Loans

Offer Equity

Offer employees equity in your company. If they really are the cream-of-the-crop level talent, you will do anything to keep them around. Also, you might want to take extra steps to make them feel truly invested in your business. There is no better way to make someone feel like a permanent stakeholder in your business than to make them a literal stakeholder. If you make this move, your top talent is sure to stick around.

David Culpepper, LifeMD

Shorten the Workweek

One crazy but innovative way that companies can retain top talent is to have four or even-three day workweeks. This would give employees more time to spend with family and friends or on hobbies outside of work that could make them happier and less likely to want to leave their job for another company. If this is not possible, companies can let employees work from home for a few days in the week instead – maybe on Thursdays and Fridays so it’ll feel like a long weekend. When companies show that they value a work-life balance, it tells employees that they value them as people. This can be a strong motivator for employees to stay with a company.

Nathan Richardson, Bariatric Journal

Let Employees Work Anywhere for Six Weeks

Remote work is a highly sought after benefit that is hard to come by with work returning to onsite. To keep top talent and entice them, allow your employees to work from anywhere for six weeks each year. Some remote contracts state that employees can’t be more than 100 km away from head office. Offering a work-from-anywhere remote policy will improve employees’ work-life balance. Some employees want to be closer to family, and some just want to travel. Offering a work-from-anywhere policy for 6 weeks each year is one-way companies can stay competitive to keep their top talent.

Michelle Beauregard, Quietly

Offer Concierge Services

Companies can retain top talent by offering concierge services. Concierge services aim to make workers’ lives easier by taking care of some of their private and work duties. This includes making reservations, arranging travels, event planning, delivery, shopping or even child care arrangements, automobile services, or dry cleaning. In fact, a concierge acts as an employee’s personal assistant.

In this way, the concierge takes some of the responsibilities off the employees’ shoulders, allowing them to focus more on work, increase productivity, or maintain a better work-life balance. Such services also reduce employees’ stress, save time, and raise job satisfaction. Concierge services offered as employee benefits attract new talent and retain current employees. Only a handful of top companies offer this kind of solution for their employees, so this benefit is undoubtedly exclusive.

Nina Paczka, Resume Now