Why talent retention is the new attraction

Recruitment has always been a challenge–but retention is even more challenging. While it’s important to focus on hiring, remember that you also need to think about how to keep those new hires on board–in other words, how to keep your people happy.

Studies show the average employee changes jobs 12 times in their career. If you can buck that trend and make people want to stay with you, you’ll have to do less hiring, which will put you ahead of the competition in the current talent drought.

New ways of hiring

The current pace of change means you need to change your mindset when it comes to hiring. If you’re creating new roles or working with new technologies, you may simply not be able to find experienced talent. Widen your search and consider that there may be people with the right personality and transferable skills in another industry.

What really matters is to market your employer brand, and back it up by actually being the organisation you say you are. The better you treat people, the longer they’ll stay and the more they’ll tell their friends and associates about you, meaning you’ll win at both retention and attraction.

Challenges of retaining staff

Employee retention comes with its own challenges in the world of remote work. How do you manage someone who lives eight time zones away? Before you start hiring remotely, create a strategy outlining who you want to hire and how, how you plan to train them, and what you plan to do to retain them. This will save you a lot of bad hires and wasted time and money.

Employer branding

Recruitment has to be a long-term strategy, of which employer branding is a key part. Employer branding is like any other kind of branding–people buy from brands they’ve heard of. Be visible on LinkedIn and other social media, communicating what you’re good at and why your organisation is a great place to work, on a daily basis–whether or not you have a job to fill.

Remuneration

If you’re paying good money, mention it up front. But be careful–you could get into trouble if employees see that you don’t have fair salary benchmarking. For example, if you put £60K in your job ad and you have employees currently in the role on £50-55K, that’s close enough. If you have a massive gap, you’ll have some disgruntled employees on your hands, and you might find yourself with more than one vacancy to fill.

If your budget is flexible, you’ll attract more candidates by saying “competitive salary” instead of giving a number. Bear in mind that if the first question an applicant asks is about the pay packet, they may not be the one you’re looking for.