Recruiting and retaining talent is a huge challenge for businesses. Without the right talent productivity and competitiveness can take a hit. Recruitment can be one of the most time-consuming tasks for management. Selection processes and the operational follow up are one element, the other element that can often be neglected is reviewing the culture new recruits are coming into. Ideally this is done prior to a recruitment exercise, it can lead to interesting insights about organisational culture.
It’s important to look at the organisational set up and ensure you have covered these 5 key areas as part of your recruitment and retention strategy.
1) Structured induction
An induction process gives the new employee an opportunity to learn about the role and the organisation. A smart leader organises this to give employees an opportunity to learn and grow into the role.
2) Performance management systems
It’s amazing how many employees cite lack of proper feedback as a key demotivating factor. It’s so important for morale to review performance in a structured way noting achievements, strengths and areas for development give clear feedback and discuss priorities.
3) Intentional Team building
Building a team requires active methods to ensure teams collaborate well together. Leadership behaviours, communications and information sharing play a huge role in this.
4) Learning and Development opportunities
Learning new skills and progression is important to the recruitment and retention of new staff. Have a real commitment of training and developing staff needs to be seen as a genuine commitment to keep staff motivated. It also increases productivity but building new or existing skills and developing your workforce.
5) Work life balance
This is an important issue for leaders to consider. There have been a number of trends highlighting how much people crave balance and the opportunity to fit in leisure, family commitments and social interests/com around work. Being able to provide flexible working models and a culture that supports work life balance is increasingly seen as a top priority for job seekers.
In the desire to build a team, it can be easy to forget that it is a candidates market and work done prior, during and after the recruitmemt process will determine your recruitment and retention success rates.
