Reduce your Developer staff turnover rates

I may be kicking myself for writing this but despite the fact that we earn fees for sourcing and placing candidates with clients, I very much prefer to see customers reduce your developer staff turnover, and I want the candidates we work with to be happy and stay for the long haul at the companies we place them in. In this article I focus on permanent hires as opposed to contractors, yet this applies to retaining good contractors as well.

Compensation

Money isn’t everything but if you’re not in the ballpark, you’re selling your company short. It will be very difficult to attract talented people, and even more difficult to retain them if the compensation you offer is on the lower side. Sorry to say it, but recruiters like me are constantly on the phones calling, mailing and connecting with local tech talent for our clients. Job satisfaction and salary are two of the main drivers as to why someone decides to part ways, and we have clients willing to pay top salaries for top talent. If you won’t pay, they’ll go away!

Low salary offerings are often a product of a lack of market awareness. This is especially true for companies who aren’t local and don’t fully understand a highly competitive and candidate-driven marketplace. “Keeping up with the Joneses” really rings true here. If you’re not familiar with the going salaries for your vacant developer (or any) positions in certain regions, there are some great tools online like Payscale or Glassdoor and most good recruiters who work in the niche should be able to assist you. We recommend going on the higher end of the scale if you’re serious about retention. If you need consultation on this for the western Canadian market, let us know we’d be happy to help.

Perks

Most tech companies we work with have GREAT perks! Flexible hours, work from home options (might become necessary with Coronavirus concerns), snacks, weekly lunches, extra time off, gaming tables, cool team events or even a beer fridge for team time events in the office. Great perks can make or break retention and even hiring. If you’re not providing great perks to your team, it’s time you rethink this if you want to attract and retain talent in this highly competitive industry.

Communication is key

Communication and transparency with your Dev team needs to be more than a monthly check in. Get to know them. Take them for lunch a few times a quarter, find out if there is anything you can do to promote job satisfaction. Find out if there are any roadblocks they face or struggles they might be experiencing.

At TM8, we regularly check in with both candidates and customers after a placement. We want to know the satisfaction from both sides, any issues, any concerns and anything we can help build the bridge with if there is something amiss. We look to be a bridge between parties and having a 3^rd party involved takes the pressure off of both sides. We are working on behalf of both sides here.

Give them insight into the long term vision

Another important way to reduce your Developer staff turnover rate is to give them a long term vision. Since development is based on cycles and there’s always an urgent project on the go and another upcoming, it’s easy to neglect regularly communicating the long term vision with your Dev team. Although this vision can and does change with market forces, new target markets, and sometimes changes in direction, it is paramount to continuously keep your team up to date with the long term vision of your software and company.

Developers often get caught up in the “Hype Cycle” and the latest technologies that will change everything. That rival company down street might be onto that new technology. From Ruby on Rails, to Angular, to the next big thing, developers can get swayed by wanting to seek out new challenges and technologies to feed their incessant need for learning and growth. Stay up to speed on these trends and see if there might be a way to incorporate them into your development plans. Keep it fresh!

It’s more than just a pat on the back

Don’t get me wrong, a pat on the back and declaration of a job well done is certainly welcome and needed to give your developers a sense of accomplishment and appreciation in their work and efforts. If you really want to reduce your Developer staff turnover; bonuses, annual salary bumps, additional time off and other incentives should be a mainstay of your retention landscape.

At the end of the day, it’s not easy recruiting top talent. Moreover, retaining that top talent when you do manage to on-board is another challenge altogether. Creating an incentive driven-and positive environment in order for your development team to flourish is essential in order to reduce staff turnover.

Agree?

If you’re interested in getting further insight into reducing your developer staff turnover, or want to connect with us on some of the premier developer talent and careers we have available, contact us on info@tm8.ca or (604)540-3532