Guide to employee retention: how to keep your best talent

How to construct a benefits program to retain top global talent

Companies that allow employees to work remotely have lower turnover rates than office-only companies. Remote’s research found this difference is estimated to grow to 4.4% in 2023.

If you want to attract and retain a global team, you must offer a locally customized, globally competitive benefits plan.

While it’s easy to fall into a ‘one size fits all’ trap, offering all employees the same benefits package wherever they are in the world, it’s very unlikely that this solution will address their needs. Benefits design should account for local needs and cultural differences as much as possible. This doesn’t just enable you to attract top talent. The best benefits programs are critical for talent retention.

Joana Viana, Senior Global Benefits Design & Strategy Expert

To customize benefits packages and compete with local employers who know the local workforce inside and out, you need in-depth local insight.

Let’s look at an example:

In the UK

Offer a medical plan with maternity cover to your employees in the UK, and they’re unlikely to be wowed by the prospect. That’s because they already have access to free healthcare, including maternity care, through the National Health Service (NHS).

In Singapore

Offer a medical plan with maternity cover to employees in Singapore, however, and it is much more likely to affect their opinion of an employer. In Singapore, maternity healthcare can end up costing thousands of dollars, so anyone considering parenthood would feel reassured to have this type of cover as part of their benefits package.

When it comes to benefits, nothing beats local insight. However, gathering this information yourself can be tricky and time-consuming. That’s why we created the Global Benefits Report. This resource helps businesses quickly and easily compare preferred benefits across countries and continents.

Want a little extra help with your global benefits strategy?

Here at Remote, we give businesses access to local benefits experts, so you know exactly which benefits you legally have to offer and which are optional extras. We also offer curated benefits plans for every country around the world, saving companies the time and money involved in doing the legwork for themselves.

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"Remote helped us build loyalty with employees by providing world-class benefits and the rights that come with being employed locally."

Heather Miki, People Operations Manager @ kWh Analytics

"We wanted to quickly grow our Mexico presence without navigating the intricacies of incorporation, payroll, and benefits management ourselves. Remote allowed us to do exactly that."

Greg Kefer,CMO @ Lifelink Systems

Build a remote-first culture to manage global teams effectively

Remote-first companies are not just for remote workers. It may sound strange, but it’s true. But adopting remote-first practices, you create a more equal working environment for everyone, regardless of where they work. Leaning into documentation, asynchronous work practices, and a culture that values results over hours is better for all. Let’s take a look at how to create a remote-first environment of your own.

How to reduce employee turnover with a strong talent retention strategy

What do we mean by remote-first?

Remote-first means that remote work is seen as the default. For employees based at your HQ and employees who have never even set foot in your office, the experience of working for your company should be the same.

Building a culture isn’t just about what happens outside of work. It’s also about how the work happens. We’ve put together a guide on how to build a strong and supportive remote culture to help walk you through it. What needs to change to go remote-first?

As many team leaders have experienced, transitioning from an office-based to a remote-first model is not without its challenges. If you try to replicate an office environment in a remote setting, you’ll only half-succeed.

Not everyone can stop by a colleague’s desk for a project update or chat with people about ongoing projects on the way to the parking lot. Missing out on those simple, everyday interactions can leave remote employees feeling disconnected, overworked, and ineffective. This issue is sometimes compounded by the common (but avoidable) mistakes that new remote managers tend to make:

Common remote leadership mistakes to avoid

• If you fail to communicate publicly and often, employees may feel disconnected from the group’s larger goals.

• If you don’t respect employee downtime and make requests of people who are off the clock, your team members may burn out.

• If you don’t set a good example of life-work balance, your employees may feel pressured to work long hours and suffer accordingly.

• If you micromanage by checking in or using time trackers to reassure yourself that your team is on task, you will drive away good workers.

• If you fail to use communication tools effectively, like by sending direct messages instead of posting in public channels, messages will get mixed and people will feel left out.

Making these mistakes can create a negative employee experience and take away from the success of your employee retention programs.

Regular employee surveys and exit interviews can help senior management determine — and, if necessary, improve — overall employee job satisfaction. And this reduces turnover.

The problem with micromanagement

Micromanagement is a common remote work problem. Many employers have felt a little nervous about handing over workday autonomy to their employees.

This means that some organizations have chosen to implement tracking tools on team members’ computers, in a bid to keep tabs on their productivity. The result, however, is that experienced employees don’t feel trusted.

This can breed resentment and lead to a breakdown in mutual respect. It also encourages key employees to meet the bare minimum level of productivity required.

So, what should remote-first managers be doing differently?

Judge employees by their productivity and effectiveness, not by the number of hours worked.

Why remote-first management is so powerful

Employees today value flexibility above all else. In the Remote Global Benefits Report, we found that workers around the world want flexibility in their workdays more than they want any other benefit, including four-day workweeks and retirement plans.

What does that mean for managers of remote teams?

Employees today are looking for workplaces where they can fit their work into their lives, not the other way around. They still want to do great work for great companies, but they are no longer willing to put their lives on hold in the process.

Prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion to keep employees connected

Employees increasingly want to work within diverse, equitable, and inclusive organizations. Remote-first organizations are uniquely positioned to accelerate the adoption of better DEI practices.

How a more diverse and inclusive culture benefits retention rates

DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is one of the most powerful multipliers for employee retention. By building DEI into your organizational culture, you get:

How to develop a diverse, equitable, and inclusive global workforce

Developing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive global workforce requires real and sustained commitment.

• Create a remote DEI committee to help you understand your challenges and opportunities.

• Solicit honest opinions on your DEI performance from your team.

• Create a formal DEI policy, updating it regularly in collaboration with all team members.

• Build DEI into your recruitment strategy by employing inclusive hiring practices.

• Support inclusion of underrepresented groups, including women, ethnic minority, LGBTQ, and neurodivergent employees

Want to become a globally inclusive employer? Get up to speed with the help of our webinar: Building a globally inclusive recruitment strategy.

5 pillars to motivate and retain a high-performing remote team

When a team feels motivated and productive, they feel much happier logging onto work each day. It is important that leaders strive to maintain motivation and performance levels across their global team. This means nurturing the employee experience, from recruitment through onboarding and beyond.

Intelligent recruitment

Get off on the right foot by employing valued-based, remote-first recruitment practices.

• Communicate clearly and transparently

• Adapt the interview process to fit candidate time zones

• Share insights into what a remote-first culture is like for employees

These practices will help you to find talented employees who share your values, gel with your team, and understand what to expect as a member of your workplace.

Seamless communication

Good communication and employee experience go hand in hand. To maximize your communication, follow our communication guidelines for remote teams:

• Prevent notification burnout. Encourage employees to turn off notifications when they need to concentrate on the task at hand.

• Make updates transparent and searchable. Document important meetings and progress reports, then save these documents publicly so they’re accessible to all employees.

• Establish communication norms. Ensure employees know communication best practice for all of the communication platforms your company uses.

• Never sacrifice 1-1s. Get to know your employees and give them space to raise issues by regularly scheduling one on one calls.

Comprehensive onboarding

Onboarding is another lever for remote-worker retention.
Employee turnover can be as high as 50% in the first 18 months of employment. To avoid being part of this statistic, the ideal remote onboarding program includes:

• Engaging, self-serve resources

• Assigned onboarding buddies

• Introduction to company values and culture

• Info on company communication norms

• Expectations and targets for their first weeks at work

• Regular manager check-ins

Opportunities for progression and clearly communicated career paths are the most effective way to improve retention (63%) — even above increasing salaries!

Smart meetings

Meetings can be highly disruptive. Too many meetings will decrease employee productivity without always providing value. What’s more, poor meeting formats can leave employees feeling frustrated and bored.

So what can you do about it? Perhaps you need to rethink the way you do meetings as a remote-first organization. Here are our tips:

• Create an agenda, then cancel the meeting if it can be addressed async

• Set shorter time limits to keep things productive and fast

• Rotate essential calls to suit different employee time zones

• Make it acceptable for people who are not active contributors to leave meetings

• Schedule time for bonding and fun facetime to keep work meetings shorter and less frequent

Run remote meetings with these tips in mind, and they’ll become effective forums for communication rather than a drain on your employees’ time.

Supportive management

When you are not spending face-to-face time with your team, it is hard to recognize signs of stress and burnout. Managers of remote teams in particular should be keenly aware of how quickly burnout can affect teams and work to prevent it.

That might mean:

• Keeping up-to-date with employee workloads

• Creating realistic deadlines

• Making time for team activities that aren’t related to work

• Encouraging employees to take breaks and book vacations

• Modeling good work-life balance so employees don’t feel pressure not to take breaks

Support employees to keep them from burning out, and not only will they be more productive, but they will be more likely to stay with your company for longer.

How flexible work practices can help you retain top global talent

Employees love flexibility, remote work, asynchronous hours, and freedom. If you run your operations with a remote-first mindset, you can provide employees with all of those things while reaching new heights on productivity, responsiveness to customer needs, and accountability.

Flexible working: a top priority for remote workers

Flexible working — the freedom to work where, how, and when you choose — is a top consideration for a large proportion of employees.

Remote’s Global Benefits Report found flexible working to be important for everyone, but especially so for women and young workers. Women often hold more responsibilities at home and with their families, which means flexibility can be a lifesaver as they juggle more responsibilities. Young people tend to be more mobile, which means flexibility can help them design the lives they want while growing with your organization.

Our Global Benefits Report underlined the importance of flexible working conditions for those working in remote roles and globally distributed teams.

This data shouldn’t just inform your recruitment strategy and compensation structure.

You need to proactively adapt and consider how you can prevent your best team members from seeking another role. Find out what your top performers value most and make proactive improvements internally to boost retention and demonstrate care and loyalty to your team.

Offering clearer paths to promotion, performance-based compensation increases, and more flexible working conditions to retain your best talent will almost always be less cost and time intensive than the alternative of losing key team members and being forced into recruiting replacements.