How Employee Retention Often Starts at Recruitment

As the Great Resignation continues, employers are looking for the best ways to attract and retain top employees for their organization. Employees have the upper hand in most markets right now, and are demanding that employers bring a lot more to the table if they are going to succeed with efforts like retention. Employers will need to up their game to keep top performers from leaving for greener pastures.

In a survey conducted by the recruitment agency Robert Half, a staggering four out of five people surveyed reported they would be looking for a new role in the latter part of 2022. That’s quite some number. It’s time for companies to make sure that they have the right strategies and tools in place to drive satisfaction, engagement, and ultimately increase retention so that they don’t watch their best talent walk right out the door.

Set People Up for Success

It starts with training and onboarding. Every single employee that is brought on board needs to be given the tools to appreciate their role and embrace their new position within the organization.

All of your onboarding materials should include information about company culture, training and support, and ways that people can expect to become a part of the organization by fulfilling their duties. Often, the main reason that people leave is that they feel detached from the start — none of this information is offered and people are just put to work, having little idea of their role, its value, or how the company culture works.

Make sure that you’re giving your candidates the tools they need to thrive in their role, but to also understand your organization and feel like they’re a part of the team from the beginning. You can’t ask people to do their best work if you’re not providing them with the best tools and resources.

Check (and Improve) the Employee Perks and Benefits

In addition to paying people well, you also need to deliver the right perks and benefits for your employees if you are going to keep them around. Check your current program for benefits and other employee rewards. See what needs to be changed or where you can make improvements. Make sure that you’re checking the competition to see what they offer and measuring up with your own offerings in return. Otherwise, you’re going to keep losing people to the companies that have better benefits.

Remember, too, that this isn’t just about health insurance and retirement accounts. Employees want a benefits package and company culture that focuses on their mental, physical, and emotional well-being, as well as their financial achievements and satisfaction. Organizations need to provide as much to employees as they can to assist them in being their best selves — that is the mark of true success with retention planning.

Consider things like flexible schedules, more lenient PTO policies, and even things like free lunches, coffee, and other small perks that can add up to big satisfaction from employees who feel valued and appreciated. Also consider financial incentives such as stock options.

Continuous Improvement and Feedback

A feedback culture is important, no matter what industry you’re in. Leaders need to be able to provide feedback to employees, and vice versa, to ensure that everyone is communicating effectively and delivering on their job duties properly.

Continuous improvement is the only mentality that works in business today and it needs to be a priority. It’s also something that should be marketed to candidates — employees value knowing that a company embraces their feedback and is consistently trying to grow and improve. It makes them know they’re joining a team that wishes to continually progress and that to do so effectively, it has to listen to the views of its workers.

If your business model doesn’t include continuous improvement already, it’s time to scratch it and create a new plan that does. You’ll be able to attract and retain better talent because you have an organization full of people who appreciate this process and enjoy the feedback, instead of being one only doing the bare minimum and which dreads performance reviews.

Work-Life Balance and Flexible Scheduling

Companies that offer flexible scheduling tend to have much higher retention rates than those with strict hours requirements. Granted, there are some industries where certain hours will need to be filled, such as in a manufacturing environment or a call center. However, many employees have learned that they can do their jobs in less time than the standard 40-hour work week and that there’s no reason for them to be punching a clock.

If your organization offers flexible scheduling in this format and works to create a strong work-life balance for its people, you will see that employees are more likely to stick around. Consider changing schedule requirements for positions too, because you might have one employee that doesn’t need the same hours as another. If you stick to rigid scheduling, you’re not going to help anyone. If your people don’t feel valued enough to be given flexible options, they’ll find other companies that value the work-life balance as much as they do.

Benefits of Employee Retention

In addition to creating a stronger company, employee retention has a lot of upsides for the organization.

When a company can retain employees, it will reduce costs spent on hiring, recruiting, training, and onboarding new staff. Some companies with high turnover rates will spend thousands of dollars each month just to hire candidates, and most of them won’t stick around long enough to make up for the onboarding costs invested. If you’re retaining employees, you aren’t spending money to hire more.

When you restructure your organization and re-focus your efforts on retention, you’ll see how bringing the right people on board can help with that from the start. After all, when you have the best talent in place and offer an environment that is conducive to allowing them to perform their best, the retention will take care of itself. That will give you the chance to focus your efforts elsewhere, and have the peace of mind knowing that your top talent isn’t going anywhere. Today, that’s a rarity for any organization and is something that shouldn’t be overlooked.

It Starts at the Beginning

In 2019, over 42 million workers in the U.S. left their jobs voluntarily. Employee retention is a high priority right now and the most effective strategies are designed to reduce turnover and keep high-performing employees on the payroll. Organizations that take the time to create a comprehensive solution for employee retention will find that they lose fewer employees and spend less on recruiting new talent.

Not only that, but the organization will have a better idea of what signs to look for that indicate someone is considering leaving their position, offering a better chance of retaining them by catering to what they are missing.

When setting up a process for employee retention efforts, make sure that you start at the beginning and utilize the tools available to help you along the way. That includes Everytalent, a great resource for attracting top talent through virtual career fairs.

Enter Everytalent for Dynamic Online Recruitment

Everytalent is offering a recruitment tool and platform that helps you to identify and assess the competencies and skills of different candidates. This helps better match candidates with job roles based on the results of their assessment.

The tool also offers recommendations for turning opportunities into strengths and helps employers address the challenge of rising hiring costs and the need to recruit better candidates. It’s a simple three-step process that offers everything that candidates and organizations need to boost retention efforts.

One of the best ways Everytalent can help is by hosting virtual career fairs. This allows companies to get access to the best industry talent without having to do all the work of planning and setting up the job fair. It also connects companies to talent from all corners of the world, including many professionals and candidates that may not otherwise be found.

Virtual career fairs are a great option for modern business because they help people stay connected, even in the remote world of work. It’s also a way to get exclusive access to some of the top industry talent by inviting them to attend. Of all employee retention strategies, starting at recruitment by delivering the right message is going to have the biggest impact.