Ten Tips to Attract & Retain Top Talent
Hiring the right employees is just the first step to creating a strong workforce. The next step is ensuring conditions are right for them to stay with your company. High employee turnover can cost a business time, money, and productivity. The following tips can help your organization attract and retain top talent:
1. Mission and Purpose
Today’s generation wants to understand the “why” behind what the company does. They need to know the purpose behind their work and believe in the mission. Every company needs to have a great mission and purpose that is communicated from the company’s leadership. Employees who feel a strong attachment to their company’s culture and values tend to be more loyal and engaged.
Ask yourself: Have you clearly communicated your corporate values, mission, and purpose to your employees? Do they fully understand what part they are playing in accomplishing your mission?
Tip: Consider taking a company-wide survey to see what employees believe to be your corporate values and mission. There are free survey tools you can use such as Survey Monkey, GoogleForms, or SurveyGizmo.
2. Solid Positive Leadership
One of the top reason that employees leave a job is often poor working relationships with their manager or supervisor. To be effective, anyone that is managing others needs proper training and guidance on performance management, communication, workplace policies, and employee development. Managing goes far beyond understanding the job of those they are responsible for, managers also need to possess the necessary skills to be an effective and positive leader.
Ask yourself: What resources have you provided to your management to ensure they continue to develop leadership skills? Are annual reviews being conducted to evaluate each manager’s effectiveness?
Tip: Consider and annual retreat or training event for management to inspire them as they lead other employees.
3. Career Growth Strategy
Building an organizational structure that allows for employee career-pathing takes time and strategy. Being able to show candidates where they can go within your organization is critical and helping current employees advance can keep top performers long term.
Ask yourself: Are you aware of your employees’ long-term career goals? Have you considered how they will fit into your organization 5 years from now?
Tip: Utilize annual employee reviews to discuss long-term goals and desires.
4. Create an Attractive Compensation Package
A competitive compensation package can put your company ahead of its competitors. Companies need to find the right mix of direct compensation (wages, salaries, commission and bonuses) and indirect compensation (health insurance, paid time off, retirement plans, etc.). Developing a total compensation plan that balances attracting and retaining top talent while keeping labor costs under control can be a tricky but essential task for any successful business.
Ask yourself: Are your employees properly motivated by their compensation packages? Are there incentive programs that could make them more effective?
Tip: Exodus HR can work with you to determine the appropriate compensation packages for your top talent. Talk to the experts to find the right solution!
5. Professional Development
One of the frequent arguments against investing in internal professional development is the concern of training employees that then will leave the organization. The better question to ask yourself is ‘what if you don’t train them and they stay?’ Great companies find the time and resources to invest back in their people. Consider internal and external training opportunities such as mentoring, job shadowing, cross-training, and professional development. Not investing in internal professional development could deter potential new hires and send existing talent to competitors that do invest back in their own people.
Ask yourself: How many professional development opportunities have you given employees in the last year and how can you improve on that in 2018?
Tip: Exodus HR provides training sessions and can connect you with various professional development tools.
6. Internal Communication
Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, distrust, reduced performance, and many other negative consequences that can result in employee turnover. Talk to your employees, have an open-door policy for employees to talk to managers and managers to upper leadership without fear of repercussion. Have regular staff meetings, an employee suggestion program, and conduct stay interviews. Often, leadership doesn’t know about a problem until an exit interview and at that point it may be too late to keep a top-performer. Open communication can determine what employees like about the organization, what could be done better, and can identify any underlying problems that are not known to upper management. These policies can go a long way in building employee morale, creating a positive culture, and leading to greater efficiencies in the work place.
Ask yourself: In a given week, how many opportunities are present for an employee to communicate freely with managers or executives?
Tip: There are many tools you can use to increase communication. Check out apps such as Slack, Yammer, or Facebook Workplace.
7. Pay Attention to Top Performers
Top performers are harder and more expensive to replace. Consider performance based bonuses or greater autonomy and responsibility to recognize and encourage exceptional performance.
Ask yourself: Have you recognized someone for a job well done this month? What motivates your top performers? Extra time off? Bonus checks? Public recognition?
Tip: Knowing what motivates each employee (especially your top performers) can enable you to provide the appropriate incentives and make the best use of your company resources.
8. Team Building
Who doesn’t want to be on high performing team? Team building should be ingrained in the culture—in everything you do. That means a team-oriented culture has to be created with purpose and nurtured. It can come down to small things like where people sit or how you conduct meetings. It also encompasses large ideals such as creating a “can do” and “in this together” attitude.
Ask yourself: Do your employees feel a sense of camaraderie? Do they help each other accomplish their goals?
Tip: Take time to foster teamwork by holding focused team building events as well as social events such as Christmas parties each year.
9. Provide Challenges
Many employees seek challenging and varied work—two factors that can keep employees engaged. Design jobs with a range of tasks and allow top performers to work on new or high-profile projects.
Ask yourself: Who in your company is being underutilized? Is there an additional project you can assign them to challenge them?
Tip: Providing extra projects can help you identify underutilized talents in your company and can provide a golden opportunity to enhance professional development and recognize top performers.
10. Hire a Human Resources Professional
If your company is growing, it may be time to hire a human resources director to oversee and streamline employee structure and processes. If your organization is not ready for a full time HR Director, it may be time to look into an HR consultant or outsourcing provider that can help build a work force strategy, manage employee benefits, perks, and performance reviews. An HR person can go a long way in building a positive company culture and can keep the company legally compliant with the ever-changing HR laws and regulations.
Ask yourself: Are you neglecting your most important asset—employees? If not, are you spending too much time managing this asset instead of focusing on the growth and overall direction of your company?
Tip: Utilizing an outsourced HR company such as Exodus HR could free you up to focus on your dreams while they help take care of your employees and ensure you attract and retain top talent.
Top talent is hard to attract and even harder to keep. Instituting these tips can go a long way to ensure your organization attracts the best possible employees in the talent pool while retaining the top talent that is already part of your organization. If you would like help in instituting any of these tips or would like to see how Exodus HR could help your company attract and retain top talent, please contact us today.
