The job market is hotting up, recruitment professionals are having to work harder to find good candidates, prospective employers are having to make hiring decisions more quickly or risk losing out, so it makes sense to do everything you can to hang on to your good people. After all you have invested in training and developing them and they are crucial to your company’s growth and success.

Review your company’s remuneration package. Offering a good salary is obviously important, but money is rarely the whole story, research indicates that it is often fringe benefits that are the deciding factors, in determining a whether a good candidate will accept your job offer or a valued employee decide to stay with the company.

Attracting new employees is only the start of building a strong and productive organisation. Next, you have to keep them. High employee turnover can cost business owners dearly in time and productivity. Try these tactics to retain your employees.

Targeting retention measures at the right people using a tailored mix of financial and nonfinancial incentives is a crucial management tool to achieve long-term business success, because while financial incentives do play an important role in retention, money alone won’t do the trick.

Offer a competitive benefits package that fits your employees’ needs. Providing health insurance, life insurance and a retirement-savings plan is essential in retaining employees. But other perks, such as flexitime and the option of telecommuting, go a long way to show employees you are willing to accommodate their outside lives.

One-size-fits-all retention packages are usually unsuccessful in persuading a diverse group of key employees to stay long term. Instead, companies should tailor retention approaches to the mind-sets and motivations of specific employees.

For example family oriented folk will appreciate the option of flexitime, telecommuting, a health package that extends to their family members and vouchers for family- friendly outings such as theme parks.

With career-driven people retention can be more about promotions, an upmarket company car with all the bells and whistles, funded training opportunities and regular discussions with each individual about his or her future career and their leadership opportunities in the organisation within the context of the company’s own plans for expansion.

Praise from one’s manager, attention from leaders, frequent promotions, opportunities to lead projects, and chances to join fast-track management programs are often more effective than cash. Indeed, a 2009 McKinsey Quarterly survey found that executives, managers, and employees rate these five nonfinancial incentives among the six most effective motivators when the main objective of the exercise is to retain people.

It is important to incentivise everyone, not just the high fliers, but the folk who may get overlooked because they do just what they are supposed to; those who turn up on time, are never or vary rarely absent and who turn in a good day’s work day in and day out. A time management system which monitors staff attendance is not just useful for checking regular absences leading perhaps to some underlying problem, but also to recognise your unsung heroes, the star attendees.

A word of praise, or some other recognition, perhaps in the form of vouchers to be used however the employee chooses can be very effective, praise and reward are far more powerful motivators than censure or criticism

Generally try providing some small perks. Free bagels on Fridays and dry-cleaning pickup and delivery may seem insignificant to you, but if they help employees better manage their lives, they’ll appreciate it and be more likely to stick around.

Use contests and incentives to help keep workers motivated and feeling rewarded.Done right, these kinds of programs can keep employees focused and excited about their jobs.

Promote from within whenever possible, and give employees a clear path of advancement, and offer training opportunities to gain further qualifications. Require your managers to spend time coaching employees, helping good performers move to new positions and minimizing poor performance.

Keep everyone involved by holding regular meetings at which employees can offer ideas and ask questions. Have an open-door policy that encourages employees to speak frankly with their managers without fear of repercussion.

Incentives help to ensure that employees know what you expect of them. It may seem basic, but often in small companies, employees have a wide breadth of responsibilities. If they don’t know exactly what their jobs entail and what you need from them, they can’t perform up to standard.