How To Increase The Employee Retention Rate For Writers
Building and managing a team of talented and professional writers is perhaps one of the biggest challenges for any team lead in the writing business. One needs to have a certain management style to effectively lead a group of creative minds and keep them happy. Not only does a manager need to ensure that the writers enjoy creative satisfaction, but one also needs to make them feel valued, accountable and being treated fairly, to improve employee retention rate among writers.
Improving Employee Retention Rate for Copywriters
If a writer feels that they are being shortchanged on any of these aspects, they are likely to quit, leading your company to suffer a high employee turnover. This article explains some useful strategies that can help you increase the retention rate for your writers.
Set Clear Expectations From The Beginning
Good retention policies start right at the recruitment stage. As a manager, you need to have clearly stated expectations of the skills and traits that you want in a writer. Having good language skills or grammar is not all that you need in a good writer. You also need a professional attitude, a willingness to go the extra mile for the team, and a desire for personal responsibility.
This is often a difficult mix and managers realize too late in the process that even though a certain writer is creative and talented, they simply cannot cooperate with other members of the team. Making these expectations explicit will help you screen candidates on these criteria and ensure that they thrive and grow within your team.
Treat Writers Fairly According To Explicit Performance Criteria
Every person managing a team of writers whether the HR manager or CEO understands that writers have a sensitive nature. Don’t be surprised if the seemingly quiet ones are well-connected to the grapevine and aware of where they stand in the pecking order. Writers tend to be defensive of their skills and are quick to perceive when they are being treated differently or being exploited. Hence, in order to increase the employee retention rate, it is necessary to develop positive attitudes among your writers and build strong team relationships.
Writers should be treated solely on the basis of their performance and the quality of their articles. Laying down tangible criteria for performance evaluation reduces feelings of insecurity among writers and gives them the right direction to target their writing towards concrete goals.
Offer Variety In Writing Projects
While a lot of writers out there have a combination of strategic and micro-level thinking, a majority of them tend to focus on details. This makes them valuable as not only writers but also editors, fact-checkers and proofreaders. But when managers fail to tap into those skills, they end up causing the writers to become bored with their jobs. These writers will most likely quit their jobs at the next available offer, not necessarily for better pay but simply to experience some variety. Make sure that you offer your writers a well-rounded experience working on different projects and give them the opportunity to use their diverse skills.
Stick To The Content Calendar
If your company is like most others in the content creation industry, you must be all too familiar with the content calendar. While managers put in a lot of effort into creating a detailed content calendar, it remains a working document at best, requiring constant updating and modification. This means that your writers frequently need to realign their priority projects to meet unexpected projects, new deadlines and projects that seem to pop out of nowhere. This may be necessary in some cases but if you allow too many changes in the content calendar you end up causing unwanted stress in your writers. This reduces their motivation to continue with their jobs and increases turnover.
Establish Processes And Workflows
Systematizing the process in your workplace can go a long way in increasing the retention rate for your writers. Writers prefer certainty and predictability, and they are more than willing to follow work processes to the dot. As a manager, you can help them by laying down processes, workflows and steps for every task and making it clear who is accountable for what. This will not only help your writers but will also help you to keep track of the tasks you have assigned to your team.
Conclusion: Improving Employee Retention Rate
As a manager responsible for a team of writers, it is your responsibility to prevent micromanagement, and ensure a reasonable employee retention rate for your writers through a good management style. This reflects positively on your writers and on your own performance as a manager. Spotting the right talent, identifying their needs and skill, and ensuring that they have the opportunities to grow professionally while contributing to the team are some of the things you need to do to retain talented writers. One example of such things is a student loan consolidation calculator, that helps writers keep up to speed with their student loan needs. Remember that writers only get better with time, which is why you should be committed to making your company the most attractive one for your writers.
