ATTRACTING AND RETAINING TALENT IN A COMPETITIVE MARKET by Jo Kangurs, KeystoneHR
In past years, financial rewards have been a key-determining factor when it comes to attracting and retaining employees but today it takes more than a bonus or a pay rise to keep the best people. With this in mind, let’ s take a look at some of the factors which convince people to either join or stay with your business.
Employer Brand Your‘ employer’ brand is as important as your business brand. It tells prospective and current employees what it is like to work for you; what your culture is like; what your values are; how you reward and recognise contribution; how you train and develop people and; importantly what makes you a better employer than your competitor down the road. Talented employees are much more likely to work for a business with a good reputation than accept a couple of extra grand from a business with a poor reputation. Take time to identify what makes your business a great place to work and make sure you communicate this through social media, the careers page on your website and via your existing employees and customers. |
Focus on Recognition A valued employee is a happy employee and when it comes to employee engagement, recognition is one of the highest motivational factors. If your employees do not feel valued in your business, they are unlikely to fulfil their potential or worse case, stick around.
Taking the time to acknowledge success and say thank you for a job well done – it goes such a long way to making people feel valued and motivated at work. Create a culture when it is safe to recognise and reward employees, ensuring any formal recognition initiatives are fairly applied and managed.
Flexibility is Key With more and more employees prioritising
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a better work life balance over monetary rewards, employers must embrace flexibility in order to retain their biggest talent. An increasing number of employers are using flexible working as a technique to attract and retain employees. Employers who do no embrace this increasing trend risk losing out on highly skilled and experienced individuals.
Getting the right people is crucial to business success. Not only is losing an employee very costly due to recruitment fees and the inevitable drop in productivity while a new employee gets up to speed, it is the loss of knowledge, customers and potentially reputation that can cause the most damage. By taking some time to consider the three suggestions in this article, hopefully you can attract and retain
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the talent needed for you to achieve your business’ objectives.
If you would like further advice on how to attract and retain employees in your business please get in touch for an initial, free no obligation chat.
For more info: www. keystonehr. co. uk
@ keystone _ hr
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Nicola McHale is Vistage chair for the South West, a private advisory group for business leaders. Nicola gives her thoughts on building a personal brand.
HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE YOUR WORKFORCE?
Working across whole different sectors from construction to banking I have been privy to some great ways of doing things and some not so good ways. Here are some ideas of how to motivate and inspire;
Know your own vision – keep it simple and make it visual. Words are not the only inspiration. People need to see it in your behaviour and feel it from you in the way you act.
Create a shared vision – Your teams’ need to know what part they must play in achieving the vision. What is their role? Why are they important? Tell them and get them involved in creating the vision. Everyone from the cleaner to the CEO needs to be involved.
Share your values – What motivates you? Tell them what is important to you and why? Ask them about them. Create a common set of values and that is how you must operate, whether it is on site or in the boardroom. Talk about what honesty means for you and for them. Make all values visual.
Commitments – Tell them what you are committed to and get them to commit too. Get agreements of their commitments in terms of behaviour – what they will do and what they will not do. Make all commitments visual. Every staff member is as important as the CEO, so include them in what you are doing and why.
121s – Ensure each person has a 121 with their line manager. Tell them what they are great at, tell them their strengths and then add one area for them to develop and work on improving.
Have open and honest conversations with them as soon as performance changes – in my experience conversations do not happen early enough or in enough detail.
As a leader you need to ensure you have the right people on the‘ bus’, they need to be going in the same direction and if not they need to get off the bus. If someone is not performing, find out why, give them the support they need to improve. Sometimes it is best for everyone if they leave the business BUT always in a respectful way.
There are no poor performing teams, it is always the leader’ s responsibility. It is up to you.
In my South West Vistage Peer Advisory Group, we challenge you the leader to hold yourself and your teams accountable for the success of the business. Your assumptions, your decisions and your ideas will be challenged and you will be supported through the journey. You are not alone when you have a Vistage Group as your Non Exec Board. Call me if you are interested in hearing more.
Nicola McHale Vistage Chair and
VI International Master Coach
nicola. mchale @ vistagechair. co. uk Mobile- 07887 616606 UK. linkedin. com / nicolamchale
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