3 essentials in a role: tips to help you retain top ecommerce talent

Jun 26, 2015 11:26:48 AM

It's not easy to retain top ecommerce talent. 

Just 5% of ecommerce professionals remain in their jobs for more than 5 years, while the majority move from year to year. In our 2014 and 2015 ecommerce salary surveys, over 45% of our respondents had only been in their current role for one year or less. 

So, why are people changing jobs so much? Is retaining top talent impossible in this day and age? We can’t give you all of the answers, but we can shed some light on career essentials and what you can do to retain top ecommerce talent. 

3 essentials you need to know to retain top ecommerce talent

In our recent industry study, we discovered 3 key factors (besides salary) that ecommerce heroes deemed as ‘essential’ in a role. 

Employee retention essential #1: make team members feel appreciated and respected

Feeling appreciated and respected topped the poll for the second year running, with 100% of respondents listing it as 'the top essential'. What does this tell us? Simply that, while a great salary is vital, throwing money at team members won't keep them from looking - or going - elsewhere. 

Now, this essential might seem like a no-brainer, but it's incredibly difficult to deliver. Everyone has their own interpretation of what feeling appreciated and respected means and it can be affected by everything from interdepartmental politics and mismatched internal goals to levels of sensitivity and personal beliefs. 

So, when considering this essential, it's definitely worth: 

  1. Speaking with your team members, finding out what makes them feel appreciated / unappreciated and respected / disrespected.
  2. Taking time to learn how any negativity can be addressed. 
  3. Ensuring that you find time to say thank you - showing your team that you appreciate them is a great way to start delivering this essential. 

Employee retention essential #2: Make sure there's always room to progress 

88% of our respondents listed 'opportunity to progress' as an essential. Team members who feel like they're going nowhere aren't going to be happy; add to this feelings of unappreciation and disrespect and they'll no doubt start looking for opportunities elsewhere. 

It's not always possible to offer team members promotions, especially when you're working in a startup, but there are plenty of ways to ensure that they don't develop that 'dead-end feeling'. 

As a manager, you can:

  1. Know what progression looks like to each your team members - never assume. For some, this might be a job title change; for others it might be learning a new skill. 
  2. Review and enhance your training programmes (both in-house and external) to make sure that team members always feel like they're learning and moving forward. 
  3. Ensure that colleagues know when performance and pay reviews are scheduled for.
  4. Make sure that everyone has clear goals to work towards. 
  5. Share departmental / company goals with your team members. Highlighting how they're contributing to the success of the business is a great way to show each and every team member just how important they are to the team and the company (and company growth often means more opportunities for progression!).  

Employee retention essential #3: Consider people, manager, culture.

We've combined our salary survey findings for 'People', 'manager' and 'culture' as they're all so closely aligned. And - let's not forget - essentials 1 and 2 depend on all of them. 

It's no secret: ecommerce professionals want to work with amazing people. They want great managers who have vision and can ensure that essentials 1 and 2 are a given within the workplace. And they want to feel as though they belong, that they can be themselves, and that they're growing as a person. 

Does your company deliver all of these employee retention essentials? 

Don't miss this year's top 5 essentials in a role

Download our latest salary survey report 

What do you think?

Share your thoughts on this post - whether you agree, disagree or have your own insight to share, we want to hear from you!

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