With attracting and retaining talent being more difficult than ever before, leaders in human resources are getting creative with everything from hiring and benefits to professional development. Gone are the days of relying on in-office perks like ping-pong tables and trendy office spaces to attract new employees. Today’s prospective employees have endured a global pandemic, and they are looking far beyond the surface to find employers that offer sustainable benefits, real flexibility and meaningful work.
While it is true that a lot of individuals are leaving the workforce, there are many people who are simply looking for something new. For these workers, it is all about changing the game. As HR leaders, we must position our organizations to satisfy job seekers’ demands while also focusing on retaining our existing people. A first priority in both regards will be maintaining a strong culture. Once you have established such a foundation, attracting the next hire and staving off resignations will come a lot easier.
As the chief people officer for a health benefits company, I work with other HR leaders every day. I am constantly collaborating with and learning from my professional colleagues. From our conversations, I have identified five ways I think we can be disruptive in how we attract and retain talent in today’s climate.
Promote Internal Mobility
With many people still working remotely or transitioning to hybrid schedules, it can be easy to lose the pulse of how employees are feeling about their roles. Too often, people are afraid to speak up when they are burned out or uninspired. As a result, the first inkling an HR leader will get that an employee is struggling is when the person goes searching for what they are looking for at another organization. In today’s market for talent, we simply cannot afford to lose quality employees.
Promoting a strong culture of internal mobility is key to retaining talent already in place. One easy way to facilitate internal mobility is to host an internal job fair. While we normally think of job fairs as recruitment tools, we can flip the focus and use them to give our own employees a low-pressure way to explore other opportunities within the organization that they may enjoy or excel at. Being upfront and transparent about potential job moves can spark important discussions with employees about how satisfied they are in their current roles, as well as which roles might appeal more and make better use of their strengths.
At my own company, we hosted a Career Exploration Day and were blown away to see nearly 75 percent of employees attend. Some were truly seeking a move. Other people took part just to learn about other departments and feel more connected. The upshot is some employees are changing seats. Additionally, we can now be more confident in knowing the employees who changed jobs will be truly passionate about what they do. Realizing these benefits for our people and the organization as a whole became possible simply because we fostered an open environment.
Promote Buy-in on the Organization’s Mission
Why do people leave their jobs? If your answer is for better pay and better benefits, you might be wrong. Yes, those are important factors, but we are also seeing a major shift in the job market. Increasingly, employees want to know that what they do at work each day matters. Employees also want to work for organizations they feel are making a positive difference.
This it is not just about having a solution-focused organization. Being mission-driven is about intentionally connecting everyone’s individual work with the organization’s overall direction. For my company, this means having a monthly all-employee meeting to talk about the organization’s goals, to inform employees about upcoming innovations and to ensure everyone feels ownership over their part of the business.
Another purpose of the monthly meeting is to give employees inspiration to support other teams. When each person knows how everything they and their coworkers do impacts the end user whose problem we are solving, we achieve better results. In this way, a relatively small effort like organizing an all-employee meeting produces some great outcomes.
Ask About Valued Traits During Interviews
To ensure the best possible culture fit when deciding who to hire, make it clear which traits are most valued within your organization. Do not be shy about asking behavioral questions during interviews. Seek to learn about someone’s personality and work style. Make sure, as well, that candidates sitting for interviews understand this process goes both ways. Encourage them to assess whether the position and the organization are good fits for them. Mismatches prevent the employer and the employee from thriving.
For example, a fast-paced, fluid and self-driven work environment suits some people very well. Others are better suited to working in a more structured environment. One is not better than the other, just different. Gearing interview questions toward digging into competencies like creativity, curiosity, empathy and an outcomes orientation will help identify which type of potential employee is seated across the table.
Ensuring the organization’s success in today’s climate will, first, require HR leaders to identify what the most important traits are for aligning with the organization’s culture. The next steps involve finding ways to better reveal those traits through the interview process.
Offer Employees Opportunities to Have New Experiences
It is easy for employees to get into a rut when they work with the same people on the same tasks every day. An HR leader I know inspires fresh enthusiasm among employees by gathering emerging leaders into cross-functional teams. Twice each year, those teams are charged with solving an actual business problem the organization faces. This is an innovative way to challenge employees and help them identify their strengths while giving creativity room to flourish.
Other organizations offer employees opportunities to work out of other offices, pursue passion projects, take sabbaticals or use their skills to support nonprofits. Whatever you do, find ways to shake up employees’ situations and provide new experiences to help them rediscover what makes them tick. Odds are, the employees will return to their regular responsibilities with greater enthusiasm and engagement.
Promote Personal Relationships
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many employees to go remote, teams lost a lot of the organic relational experiences that accompany in-person work. We cannot lose sight of how important interpersonal relationships are to job satisfaction.
As the new normal takes hold and we learn to live with both COVID-19 and work models that include more remote and hybrid employees than ever before, we need to consider how to promote personal connections.
One HR leader I know plans and budgets for regular team events that are not related to work. He knows merging the personal and the professional can bolster employee satisfaction in a big way. Some of the things his company has done is bring in food trucks, organize group volunteer events and hold hobby showcases. Each was sponsored by the company even though none was about work. The intent was to cultivate personal relationships.
While all five of the strategies discussed here can make a big impact on hiring and retention, the most impactful step you can take as an HR leader is to sit down with your people. Find out what is most important to them. If they have suggestions for improvements, seriously consider those. Odds are, the benefits or perks your current employees value will also be valued by the new talent you are trying to recruit.
01 April 2022
Category
HR News Article