The corporate world is going through challenging times these days. In the last three years, we faced a global pandemic and many other geopolitical challenges that left both people and businesses in an inadequate position.
Businesses reopened, and social distance measures are no longer in force, but still, there is a vast range of other problems affecting companies around the globe. Constant economic uncertainties make it difficult for business owners to keep their organizations on the right track.
Finding and recruiting new talents becomes increasingly challenging as inflation rises. The higher living expenses force people to look for jobs with higher wages and appropriate benefits.
Retention management can help us when hiring new skillful people. For instance, once a potential employee walks into your company for a job interview, you need to have a plan for how to build trust and make the entire process successful.
Developing a Retention Strategy
Undoubtedly, retaining people within your organization could be challenging, but it should be one of your main priorities. Looking away from employees who might leave your organization can bring devastating results in terms of not delivering projects on time. This is especially present in the IT market.
The shortage of IT workers can force business managers to outsource software development. Although this can be an effective short-term solution, it can help them overcome the situation.
However, get ready to act on time and increase your retention rates if you do not want to lose your employees. These are the essential staff retention principles:
- Understanding the purpose of work – Employees have to know the exact purpose of their work in a company. In other words, they need to understand how their professional efforts contribute to the company’s growth. Otherwise, they will consider leaving your company.
- Learning opportunities – Do not wait for your employees to fall into their comfort zones. Find out how to make their jobs more enjoyable. Talk to them and comprehend all their passions and desires. Employees eager to gain new skills should be rewarded with an opportunity to do that within your company, not elsewhere.
- Getting paid at the market level – Well-compensated workers are more likely to stay within your organization. Furthermore, they will feel more empowered to go the extra mile in executing their tasks. So, keep your employee compensation plan up-to-date and make sure your employees have at least the average market wage for a specific job.
- Flexible working hours – Instead of working nine-to-five, provide your employees with an opportunity to work whenever they want. Remote work is another great retention strategy that can boost productivity and creativity. Consider having both of these models.
Incorporating a Retention Strategy into Your Recruitment Process
Documenting Your EVP
EVP or employee value proposition represents benefits an employee receives when working for a business. To implement a retention strategy into your recruitment process, you need to break down all EVP benefits into several categories:
- Culture (i.e., mission, vision)
- Work environment (i.e., work-life balance, mental safety)
- Core benefits (i.e., remote work, health care)
- Compensation (i.e., salary rises, bonuses)
- Career (i.e., promotions, mentorship)
Considering all the above, you can define short-term and long-term retention benefits. For instance, there is a difference between a new employee and an employee with five years of experience working in a company. They do not have the same requirements.
Short-term retention benefits may include competitive salaries, essential benefits, or fun perks. However, long-term retention benefits are career growth opportunities, performance-based bonuses, vacations, etc.
Creating Benefit Tables
The first step of implementing a retention strategy into your recruitment process is putting everything on paper or digitally in a software tool. Do not avoid putting all data in the same place since you will have a clearer picture of what you can offer potential employees.
For instance, making a table helps you to sort out all the benefits your company offers. Make a one with two columns for “short-term” and “long-term” benefits.
Each table row should be filled with a specific EVP category, such as compensation or work environment. Consider making one table for each department in your company.
As a result, you can compare short-term and long-term benefits and see which one prevails.
Interviewing Candidates
At this point, HR managers have to speak with potential employees to gather all retention ideas. They need to document all information received from the candidates. Once they gather all the ideas, they can rank them by using a simple scoring system:
- 1 for “strongly agree”
- 2 for “agree”
- 3 for “strongly disagree”
| Ideas | Are potential employees asking for this? | Do we have the resources? | Is the idea easy to implement? | Total Score |
| Idea 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Idea 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Idea 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
Priority should be given to the ideas with the highest number of requests that require a reasonable investment of resources and are easy to implement. In the table above, that can be Idea 2.
Conclusion
When incorporating retention strategies into your recruitment process, your primary focus should be short-term benefits. These benefits are preferred by people who want to join your team. In this case, pay special attention to the following elements:
- Competitive salary
- Fun perks such as game rooms, gyms, and table football
- Modern offices close to the city center
- Flexible working hours and remote work
HR managers are the first point of contact for new employees. This is why this sector is accountable for developing and implementing retention strategies.
To make this process successful, they can rely on the most common staff retention principles we have pointed out in this article. However, retention management should be a unique, systematic, and well-documented process.
HR specialists can use document spreadsheets to sort and prioritize all the retention benefits a company can offer. Each company’s department should have a table with short-term and long-term benefits.
