Our employee retention used to suck. Here’s how we fixed it.

At Accelity, we used to have a real problem with employee retention.

We weren’t just losing people—we were losing great talent, and it was tough on everyone.

Our leadership team realized that something had to change if we wanted to keep the amazing people who made our agency what it is.

Fast forward to today, and we’re proud to say our team members stay with us for an average of 2+ years longer than the average marketer.

How the heck did we do it?

💡 Made changes from the “top” down.

If leadership doesn’t model the behavior we want to see in employees, then why should employees do the same? Our leaders dug in deep, had hard conversations, and adjusted their styles to support team members better. This also meant getting good at hearing feedback and taking it well. That took some time and was essential to getting honest feedback from the whole team.

💡 Began hiring based on need, not guesswork.

We did the math on what workloads should actually look like at the company. Sometimes, we had too many employees and not enough work… other times, we were behind on hiring our next employee.

Being a billable business is tough, and guessing at the numbers was not working. We got realistic, did the research, and came up with accurate and fair time estimates. Then, we trained, trained, trained employees on the why behind those numbers. Now, we are having really solid conversations around workload, and the team seems more transparent about when they need help.

💡 Shifted roles to decrease stress and pressure on team members.

We’ve had these conversations a few times as our agency has grown. A few years ago, we saw a big issue in how we did things. We noticed that some team members were doing a job requiring two separate skill sets—which would make anyone’s brain break. 🤯 We adjusted the role and split it into 2 jobs, which helped quite a bit with retaining great talent.

💡 Fixed our process (again… and again).

Our processes are kind of like Madonna—they’ve been reinvented A LOT. And that’s okay, because change. is. good. When a process isn’t working and it’s impacting efficiency, we can’t just tell our team to “figure it out”—we’ve got to dig in.

When a process wasn’t working, we adjusted it, tested how it was working, and collected more feedback. Since our last round of process adjustments, we are seeing the payoff: clients are happy, and the team is reporting they are feeling solid.

💡 Continue to treat our team members like adults.

This is a big one. We can’t and don’t police our team on what they are doing. So when an employee has a dentist appointment during work hours, that’s cool—go, enjoy! (Or enjoy the dentist as much as one can…)

We implemented half-day Fridays to help employees feel more balanced.

We don’t micromanage.

We want our team to come as their whole selves to work, so we create policies to support that. Showing up to work feeling unsupported sucks—we can’t and won’t go back to that energy anymore!

Because of this (knocking on wood ✊🪵), our employee retention rate for the past 9 months is at 99%!

We’re proud of how far we’ve come, and we’re committed to making Accelity a place where people want to stay and grow!