Recruitment Strategy

How to Get Employees to Stay

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(Christian Chan/Shutterstock)

Employee retention keeps many HR professionals up at night. You can just hear the echoing murmurs throughout HR conference rooms across the country as turnover rates go up in this tight labour market. Many of them ponder these thoughts:

  • How do you keep employees from leaving?
  • What will make them stay?
  • Retention is the key, someone will always say

However, is retention really the key? Perhaps our language around employee turnover is wrong. Let us look at the definition of the word retention:

“The continued possession, use, or control of something.”

Now, let’s put that in the HR context and the perspective of building a relationship with the employee:

  • the continued possession of employees
  • the use of employees
  • the control of employees.

It makes one ponder how employees interpret the meaning of retention. Would you want to be retained by your employer, let alone be considered a controlled possession?

Is retention the key? Or perhaps it’s time to move our language forward.

MEC, an outdoor supply retailer, has always been an innovative company right from its foundational roots of being a cooperative.  MEC applies a forward thinking concept of employee retention. Here is a quote from Nahal Yousefian, chief people experience officer at MEC:

“The philosophy we’re taking here at MEC is that the approach to talent retention is already outdated.”

What does she mean talent retention is outdated?  What is MEC replacing it with? MEC is replacing the controlling concept of retention with the concept that the employees’ talent should be generated and that will create an environment where employees will want to stay.  This seems to make complete intuitive sense.

There are also surveys that support this concept transition; here are some current statistics about retention according to a Hays study:

  • 43% of employees are actively looking for other career opportunities and
  • 71% of employees are willing to take a pay cut for their ideal role

In addition, LinkedIn has discovered that 93% of employees would opt to stay in their role if their employer invested in their careers.

Think about these numbers for a minute: Almost 100% of employees will stay if the employer will develop them, and almost 75% are willing to take a pay cut to leave their current employment.

It may be time for HR professionals to put the controlling language of employee retention to bed and truly be a workplace where employees want to stay. All it may take is a true relationship-building commitment of employee development.

Discussion Questions

  • Research several organization that have low turnover rates.  Once that list is generated, identify what are the factors that may influence their success.
  • Identify what are the most beneficial training and development activities employers can implement to create an environment where employees want to stay employed

How To Keep Your Star Employees

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Leo Wolfert/Shutterstock

Most supervisors are the worst enemy for employee retention – and it may not be their fault. The fault may lie with the well-intentioned Human Resources department and their overreaching policies and procedure manuals.

A now-departed business associate of mine, Ron McQuide, once told me something that has always stayed with me: “All HR policies are just the scar tissue left over from some employee’s mistake.”

Think about what scar tissue does to a body: it can be unpleasant looking on the surface, but below the surface, it can decrease function, flexibility, and potentially cause more damage. Think about many of the policies that HR departments make their supervisors enforce. Here are some of those policies:

  • punitive attendance management programs
  • ineffective and condescending annual performance reviews
  • fault finding safety programs.

Many HR policies and procedures are valuable and effective, but just as many are not. Many of our HR systems are focusing on the wrong things, which is not beneficial to retain your star employees.

A Fact Company article by author Stephanie Vozza outlines some ideas on how to keep star employees from exiting the building.

One big idea (which is not new) is to give people autonomy to do their job. Star employees know what to do to be successful, so make sure HR policies do not hold them back.  Another idea is to keep the lines of communication open by having formal stay interviews. Ask them where you can help them in their career path.  Also, be open to their suggestions and respond to changes your employees want to make.

“Strive to create a community where people can be themselves, have a good time, bring their A-game, and employee engagement will follow,” Vozza suggests.

If more employers took Vozza’s advice, it would certainly make the executive recruiter’s job much more difficult.

Discussion Questions

Think back to a job you have had. Did you see examples where HR policies and procedures were holding you or other employees from performing at their best?

Review the Fast Company article. Create a dynamic performance management program that could be presented to a VP of HR that incorporates some of the ideas in the article.

Talent Shortage or Recruitment Skills Shortage?

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What does your company value more? The potential employee or the recruiting process? All organizations should ask themselves that question? Is there a talent shortage in Canada and the USA? Well, based on the following North America headlines one would definitely think so.

If these headlines are accurate, employers should be raising the alarms and screaming at governments, educational institutions, and HR departments to do something — anything!

However, according to Liz Ryan, CEO/founder of Human Workplace, and author of Reinvention Roadmap, the headlines are all wrong. Her opinion is that there is no talent shortage. Rather, it’s organizations that lack effective recruitment skills.

Click here to watch a short video on the five mistakes organizations make when recruiting.

Could the recruiting process itself be the problem, rather than a lack of suitable employees? Most HR departments pride themselves on their sophisticated recruiting systems. They have often created complex processes, which may include online applications, impersonal advertising, tedious screening tests, and uninspired interviews. HR carries out these screening activities for two reasons: to be duly diligent, and because they believe good systems will hire the best candidates. But, could these HR processes in fact be barriers to finding and hiring the best candidate? Perhaps in some cases the reason the best candidate wasn’t found is because he or she chose not to apply.

HR needs to start treating potential employees like customers, marketing to them, and treating them with respect. Companies need to be convey to prospective employees the message that, “we value you, not our recruiting processes.”

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Think about the last time you applied for a job and you went for an interview. How was the process? What did you like about the process? What did you dislike about it?
  2. If you were an HR consultant called in to assess the company’s recruitment process, what recommendations would you make?

Hiring Today and into the Future

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A Chief HR Officer I knew very well told me, “Once upon a time we used to use shovels to dig a trench because the shovel was the most efficient technology we had at the time; now we use a back hoe because it is available and more efficient.” The traditional process of collecting and screening resumes can be like using a shovel. The question is, has the time come to drop the shovel, and to start being more efficient by using the new technology that is available? In the world of HR, artificial Intelligence (AI) might just be the technological equivalent of the back hoe.

Click here to read Somen Mondal, ideas on AI and hiring process.

Where is the trend of using AI for hiring going? Who is using AI? What are its successes?

The adoption of AI technology is increasing, with many larger companies experiencing success as they use it in their hiring processes. Unilever is an excellent example. Their new process allows for the following:

  • Greater self-selection by applicant
  • Faster decision making
  • Deeper levels of applicant engagement

Click here to watch a short video on Unilever’s hiring process.

Unilever’s hiring process has become more efficient by using AI to screen and rate candidates from video interviews. Their hiring numbers speak for themselves. Unilever has reduced the hiring process cycle time from 4 months to just 2 weeks. It no longer participates in expensive on-campus tours to generate its recruitment pool; it does it all online, making decisions based on algorithms.

AI for hiring is a trend that is not going to slow down. It is the wave of the future in HR recruitment. Therefore, HR professionals should begin to assess, implement, and evaluate AI hiring systems that will work for their own organizations.

Discussion Questions:

Your VP of HR is aware of Unilever’s success in using AI for hiring. She would like you to create a 5-minute presentation reviewing three other organizations that are using AI as part of their hiring process.

What do you think is the greatest benefit of using AI as a hiring technology? What do you think is the greatest drawback of using AI, or an applicant tracking system, as part of your recruitment strategy?

 

Time is the Answer

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Hands holding clocks
Source: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

The question is, how do we, as Human Resources professionals, make the recruitment process successful for both parties?

Time can be our best friend or our worst enemy, especially as it is one of the key components of any recruitment strategy.   In a recent LinkedIn post, Scott Case states that we need to ‘get real’ with candidates about the actual skills, culture, and work environment that are involved in any interview process.  More importantly, he identifies how quickly we expect the interview process to proceed and the pressure that is in place to make the hiring decision as soon as possible.

Click Here to Read the Article

Making sure that the interview process is transparent, however, does not just happen.  A commitment to transparency about the types of skills, culture and work environment that the organization really wants, comes from a well-planned, and well-timed end-to-end strategic recruitment process.  It is true that the candidate really does need to understand what the potential workplace is like.  After all, the employment decision is not just on the side of the employer.  The candidate too has to make the big decision whether or not this particular job, with this particular employer, is the right fit for them based on their own personal values and workplace experiences.

When we think about making the big decisions in our own lives, most of us need lots of time to think about the pros and cons of that decision. When decision-making is rushed, the end result often does not work out well for anyone involved.  When hiring decisions go wrong, the impact has significant negative ripple effects on all of the parties involved.  As Human Resources professionals, we need to ensure that the hiring decision goes the right way, by allowing everyone involved to have the time to make the decisions they need to make, based on well planned, thoughtful, and transparent processes along the way.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Thinking about your own approach to decision making, what steps do you follow to make the ‘right’ decision for you?
  2. After going through a recruitment process as a candidate, have you ever decided that the position you were interested in was not the right one for you? What happened during the process that helped you make that decision?
  3. As a Human Resources Professional, identify how much time is needed for an end-to-end successful recruitment process.
  4. Why is it important to ensure that candidates have a clear understanding of the required skills, work culture, and the environment involved for any position in any organization?