Building and strengthening bonds with your employees is crucial to any organization that wants to foster employee engagement. When you connect with your team, they will become enthusiastic and engaged resulting in higher employee retention rates. We spoke to James Hornick, Partner in the Digital Experience and Marketing Recruiting team at Hirewell, to gather insights and tips for prioritizing employees and building strong connections. James strongly believes and advocates for creating strong connections with your team members to ensure that you are being accessible to them and their needs. Employees that feel valued will be more engaged and productive resulting in happy clients and a successful organization.

James connects with his team by having one-on-one meetings to address any questions, issues, challenges, or current projects his team is working on. Here are #ThreeTips James shared with Holistic about conducting one-on-one meetings to help you build strong connections with your team:

1. Schedule a recurring appointment in your calendar to get coffee or lunch with each person on your team. Every 2-6 weeks, depending on your team size. Nothing takes priority over these; something must be absolutely burning down to cancel.

2. It's their meeting. Your team members decide what to discuss. Just ask how they're doing, if there's anything they need help with, what they'd like to do more of or get into next, and what you can do to assist.

3. Follow through. If there are any challenges or concerns that you can address, do it the same day. If it requires buy-in from others, make it a priority for that week. But always circle back and let your team members know you've addressed things. If you're not taking action, it's all a waste of time.

Any employee retention initiative that's done without first simply talking to your employees with open dialogue is lighting money on fire. There's no substitute for an open dialogue. You need to know what you don't know.

Connect with James on LinkedIn for more employee retention and recruiting insights.