Recruitment and retention are issues that have been hitting the press regularly over the last few months. Largely driven by a combination of the pandemic and employers’ refusal to pay more than minimum wage, hiring and keeping enough good quality people to successfully operate your business is becoming more and more challenging. Fortunately, with the advice below you can attract and retain valuable employees, ensuring your business maintains productivity and its edge over the competition. Keep reading to find out what they are.
Handle the recruitment process yourself
Tempting as it is to hand off the entire process of finding new people for your business to someone else, it is usually much more effective if you handle it in-house. After all, no one knows your own needs better than those already working within your company.
Dealing with recruitment in-house can also make it a lot more of an efficient and effective process. Candidates get a better idea of what they can expect from a position, and much of the waiting and bureaucracy of working with an agency is cut out, making it easier for all involved.
Offer higher than the going rate in your industry
Money has become an almost dirty word in the recruitment and retention industry, with some job adverts not even displaying the salary on offer. However, no matter the career or vacation most of us choose, the remuneration involved will always play an important factor.
With that in mind, offering incentives such as higher than the average pay for your industry will always help you attract the best people and keep them over the long term, even in particularly challenging circumstances. Indeed, Passavant Memorial Homes are an excellent example of this as by raising their hourly rate by $3 for front line staff over the pandemic they demonstrated how much they valued them, and so managed to retain, and even recruit new staff despite the chaos occurring in many other direct service businesses.
Choose potential over experience
Another smart way to ensure your business stays staffed by the best people is to recognize that while important, experience isn’t everything. In fact, by having a strong training and international promotion structure, employing candidates with the potential to progress can work very well. Yes, you will need to invest in them to ensure they add value over the long term, but this is something that will only help to encourage them not to jump ship later on.
Treat employees with respect
This last one is particularly important. This is because, if you choose to treat employees only as resources, their emotional well-being is bound to suffer, and this will have the knock-on effect of making them much less likely to stay. Indeed, there are far too many businesses that claim to treat their workers like family, only to cast them aside when they need support.
With that in mind, having a robust employee conduction guide is vital, as this can help define the type of behavior that is acceptable across the board. Additionally, investing in extra benefits such as medical, dental, and mental health support can help keep your employees in tip-top condition and also encourage long-term loyalty in an increasingly challenging labor market.
