The “Keep your talent” cheat sheet

The Great Resignation: The Death Star of 2022. If you have been living under a rock or had the privilege of not knowing what this dawning era constitutes, consider yourself lucky. With the COVID-19 pandemic, extraordinary disturbances in the U.S. labor market skyrocketed. Widespread job losses in the early months of the pandemic gave way to tough labor markets in 2021, now commonly known as “The Great Resignation.” The nation's “resignation/quit rate” reached a 20-year high last November. Talk about absolute insanity…

But now, we must think ahead and how, we as employers, can improve our retention rates during this trying era. The secret ingredient to your happy workplace environment is culture. Culture makes a huge difference when companies want to hire and keep top talent. As we have noted (again and again), employees tend to work harder in a positive environment where they enjoy their work. Friendly office culture will make employees feel comfortable, especially when approaching leaders with any issues or concerns.

Here a cheat sheet on recruiting and retaining the people you want:

Developing an experience that attracts and converts people who will stay.

1.       Study Your Talent

The best way to attract great people is to study your great people. This will help you understand the places and mindsets they currently are and to fully comprehend what candidates YOU’RE looking for. Once you study and analyze the candidates you are looking for, you can research that candidate pool to determine specific potential employees you want to add to the team. Then get your message out to these candidates, whether that is digitally or in person, or by using a job search software that reaches out. And the people who are already working with you have these answers…Talk to them, and then listen!

2.       Offering interview feedback

Different candidates have different strengths, and you must understand how to influence their talents and skills. You want to ensure that candidates feel welcome when they interview with you, regardless of if they receive an offer or not. If a candidate is turned down for employment, then having feedback will allow the candidate to improve their interview skills in the case that there are future opportunities at your company.

Now once you go through the steps above, the next task is turning applicants into employees:

1.       Offer competitive benefit packages

People are always looking at what sets you apart from others. Candidates want to know that they are getting paid fairly for their work, which is why money and benefits are vital to be mentioned during the recruitment process. Ensure that you are proposing a competitive salary when hiring new employees and promoting current employees if you want to recruit and retain top talent!

This ties in hand in hand with our Voice of the Candidate Research that we do with our friends at PandoLogic. This helps organizations to better understand the pulse of the candidate, what they need and want from us as employers. With candidate sentiment at an all-time low for the job search, it is time to double down on strong employer brand content in your jobs and on your career website. Let them know where they will work. Give them a reason to apply to you, to talk about you, and to feel hopeful again.

2.       Analyzing Your employee benefits

Here’s what you need to know: employees want top tier benefits. You need to be able to analyze your benefits and determine if they stand apart from your competitors. Top Tier benefits include health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, retirement plans, tuition reimbursement, remote work, and more. To ensure you set your company apart from others to retain top talent, make sure you have impressive employee benefits… trust me, you will have an easier time recruiting quality candidates when you do. Things like the 4-day work week and exceptional parental leave policies matter.

Onto the last, but most important piece of information to tackling the Great Resignation Era:

Improving Employee Retention

1.       Invest in training

This makes sure that your supervisors and directors possess the tools they need to work with their teams efficiently.

2.       Support employee engagement

If your employees feel engaged and involved with the company, then they will be more likely to stay through difficult times and continue producing quality work. Consider making attendance at company-sponsored events a requirement or make a fun game out of it, such as: whoever team has the most attendance, wins a free lunch at work. You can even offer perks to employees that attend company events for an incentive.

3.       Address issues immediately and proactively

It’s vital to address issues quickly before they grow into a larger problem and affect more employees. As soon as you notice an issue, address it so that your team feels they have someone looking out for them and paying attention to the workplace around them.

4.       Foster professional growth

One of the best ways to improve employee retention is by fostering professional growth for your employees. Ensure that you, as their leader, are empowering them to learn new skills so that they have a unique value to add to the company. These specific opportunities can be giving them a chance to work on project management, promoting their ideas, or more, these opportunities help to keep your employees engaged and fulfilled.

5.       TRANSPARENCY!

If you are familiar with our blog posts, you already know about the importance of transparency in the workplace. A stronger and transparency employer brand will aid in your self-select for the qualities you desire in a new hire. You need to design an interview process that demonstrates your companies’ pillars: who we are and what we stand for. If a candidate is right for the job, they will follow suit as long as you remain transparent about the workplace.

6.       Be a role model

If you want your employees to be motivated, you must lead by example. By doing this, your team will be more likely to follow suit and stay on board with your visions for the future.

7.       Promote and share internal opportunities to elevate, grow, and thrive.

WORQDRIVE is the Internal Mobility platform that provides employees to want to stay. Employees using WORQDRIVE log in 3 times a month to see new matching jobs that suits their skillsets, add talents and unique skillsets to their profile, and advocate for their teammates.

Takeaway:

It is vital to realize that employee retention begins with hiring the right people for each role. TO retain and recruit top talent, you must start by locating the appropriate people for the job and creating an appealing and fulfilling work environment where they can succeed.