When you subtract attrition from your new hire rate, the numbers might not be exceptional after all. Hiring a team is only part of the battle. You’ve got to hire the right team, and then you’ve got to keep that great talent. That’s arguably the biggest job you’ve got.
Sourcing candidates and candidate retention go hand in hand. You already know that keeping your team on board is the name of the game. But the instruction manual says that retention begins at the source: candidate sourcing, or better yet, candidate matching.
Job Perks Mean Something Different Now
It wasn’t long ago that a great talent sourcing strategy was to dream up the best and sometimes wackiest perks to pique interest. That’s been done, and top talent really is all the wiser. What’s more important now is getting something meaningful from the job. They want to feel like part of the company. They want to collaborate, says Fast Company, and they want to feel inspired.
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Instead of a We and Them attitude, candidates look for a situation where they can integrate themselves into the company and the company culture. Social values that resonate with the candidate are important, according to Shared Value Initiative. When the company and new hires share the same values, there’s a better chance of fitting in not just skills-wise, but on every level.
What seems like a perk to a candidate isn’t always easy to learn through an application and an interview. But candidate matching technology can help you sort that out long before you make a job offer. There’s a lot less mystery when candidates are matched in advance, and a lot more likelihood of keeping them.
Be Open-minded About How Employees Work
Everything is moving to a more open model these days. There’s an open-concept office, but much bigger is the open talent economy. People aren’t tethered to offices anymore, and they’re not relegated to an office or a cubicle. That’s the work lifestyle that truly great talent might aim for, and many companies offer it.
If there isn’t a logical reason for an employee to take up space in the office, it’s smart to let go of the “old notions of how, where and when work gets done,” according to Fast Company. This offers employees freedom, and it also frees you to work with collaborators who might not be on staff.
It’s a more dynamic workplace now, or at least it can be. And that means you could find the perfect recruit three states away or in Singapore. It also means that the perfect employee might prefer to work four days a week instead of five. And who says a new hire has to commute to your office if the work can just as easily be done elsewhere? Talk about a broader talent pool! Candidate matching can help you home in on the best around the world, not just within a 30-mile radius.
Make Growth and Development a Reality
Nobody wants to feel stagnate in a job. That’s a leading cause of attrition, according to Employment Crossing, and if affects some of your best employees. Skill sets stagnate when there’s no room for advancement and growth, and no one can afford that. Not you, and not your employees.
Within about five years, the skills that your employees have will start to become irrelevant. That’s what the Delloite Shift Index reports. Your employees know it too, which is why they won’t stand by and watch their peers move ahead without them. They’ll follow, and they’ll follow elsewhere if they need to.
Growth doesn’t always mean climbing the corporate ladder, either. Fast Company says some of the most successful people “have zigged and zagged” to get to where they are. The corporate lattice model should replace the ladder because it gives your employees many more opportunities than only moving vertically or not at all.
The attributes and experiences that employees find most valuable in a company will likely never remain the same year-over-year. But you can dramatically improve new hire retention by shifting to a business model that’s adaptable, and by using candidate matching technology on the front end.