Aggressive Recruiting And Retention
Aggressive Recruiting And Retention
Through surveys and one-on-one interviews, it has been confirmed that most organizations use fairly traditional recruiting and retention processes (newspaper ads, some web site ads, and some referral programs). Unlike traditional recruiting, which merely reacts to business pressure; aggressive recruiting takes the strategic responsibility for driving the organization’s performance.
As with any highly specialized activity, success in running an aggressive recruiting and retention campaign is largely dependent on flawless execution of a short list of factors. These factors include: Dedication by senior leadership to adjust corporate culture and management styles, to meet the changing demands of the talent population, dedication of needed recruiting and retention resources, senior-level support, and an unrelenting focus on execution.
Only those organizations with the best recruiting and retention policies will succeed in the talent economy. Recruiting and retention are interconnected. When an organization is trying to “retain” talent, it is in fact “attracting” talent as well. Thus, recruiting and retention should not be addressed as disparate policies, but rather as one “strategic talent” policy.
A basic and most important recruiting tactic to employ, especially in a tight labor market, is to take good care of the talent you have. This is not just a matter of wages and benefits, but also encompasses keeping the work meaningful, interesting and challenging and truly demonstrating in a genuine manner your appreciation for what your present staff continues to accomplish on a daily basis. Most organizations do this to some degree, but it is a point worth mentioning because it is a critical strategy in the war for talent. Good solid employees rarely leave good solid organizations where they are appreciated.
The following list provides some guidelines in your search to identify your organizations top talent and the type of talent you wish to hire.
Twelve Traits of Top Talent:
1. They have a great attitude.
2. They want to make a difference.
3. They set high and lofty goals.
4. They don’t settle for the status quo.
5. They attack problems not people.
6. They have an entrepreneurial and innovative spirit.
7. They have the ability to focus intently on reaching their goals.
8. They keep their eyes on the big picture.
9. They have a predisposition for tenacity.
10. They see available resources and to use them accordingly.
11. They know when to lead and when to follow.
12. They have a critical skill your organization needs.
Talent: This is the sum of a person’s abilities – his or her intrinsic gifts, knowledge, skills, experience, attitude, judgment, character and drive. It also includes his or her ability to learn, change and grow.
The following twenty actions are provided to stimulate a more aggressive recruiting and retention process in a tight labor market. Brainstorm in your organization and add to the list and/or see what the best fit is for your mission, vision and culture. The war for talent has heated up and appears to be a campaign which will last for a long time. The acquisition and retention of a productive talent pool will require continual aggressive tactics.
Strategies and Tactics Which can be applied to: Recruiting and Retaining Talent
1. Managers “Must” be an Integral Part of the Recruiting and Retention Process: First and foremost… the best and quickest way to reduce employee turnover is for managers to be “very involved” in employee hiring and retention. “There is a direct link between turnover and level of manager/employee face-to-face engagement” (The Gallup Organization). The key to successfully retaining a talented staff lies in initially hiring the most talented individuals for management positions and then training them in the skills required to effectively lead their subordinates. The manager’s role is to identify and release the unique talents and skills within each employee and help channel these talents and skills to the benefit of both the company and individuals. Only by recruiting, identifying the employee’s talents and retaining that talent, can the manager achieve the organizations goals and satisfy clients’ needs. A great manager listens to their employees and preemptively acts to prevent problems, seeks information and ideas from their employees and acts to continually improve conditions on all levels. Managers/supervisors at all levels need to be trained in how to help reduce turnover. First, the managers/supervisors must understand the numbers, the “cost of turnover” in their organization and what they mean to the company and to themselves personally. (See “Cost of Turnover Calculator” at end of this paper) Managers/supervisors are not necessarily proficient at retention-oriented leadership unless someone helps them along the path and makes it part of their performance metric. Training should include scenarios of how things might be different with more or less turnover so they can appreciate the benefits of workforce stability and the role they play in maintaining that stability. The organization should provide coaching to help managers improve the way they work to hire and retain their people. Managers must accept the fact that to a large degree employee turnover is their responsibility. To the greatest extent possible managers should:
• Provide a workplace where people feel respected and valued.
• Provide a workplace where employee ideas and efforts are noticed and considered important and where talent is recognized, promoted and celebrated.
• Provide less bureaucracy, less red tape to make decisions.
• Adopt a management style that is inclusive and recognizes the value that the individual brings to the shared success of the organization.
The organization should set up a reward system for managers based upon turnover in their area of responsibility. Reward achievement of agreed-upon retention goals using cash, trophies, certificates and plaques, or simply public recognition. These awards should be bestowed by senior managers as part of their role in inspiring, guiding and coaching managers/supervisors to higher levels of “retention performance and accountability.”
2. Institute a Fair Referral Program: An employee referral program can be and, most likely, should be your organization's best source of hires. Whether you're a large or small organization, employee referrals deliver the best quality hires via the most cost effective channel. In an increasing number of surveys, a well defined formalized employee referral program is constantly cited as the number one recruitment tool. Good employees will recommend other people who will be good employees… because their reputation is on the line. Your employees are out in the community and meet potential employees through church, school, neighborhood and community activities. Constantly communicate to your employees the fact that you have a referral program through meetings and email. Keep the program simple. Encourage your employees to recommend their friends and family members by offering referral fees. Additionally, put anyone’s name that refers an employee who is hired into a hat, to become eligible for a quarterly $1,000 prize.
NOTE: The most recent research comes to the conclusion that referrals consistently produce the highest-quality candidates of any recruiting source. To take advantage of this fact the following steps can enhance your organizations referral process.
• Identify the top performers that currently work in the job areas for which you are recruiting.
• Invite these top performers to identify the names of the very best individuals they know.
• After identifying the names, ask these top performers to help you contact these individuals and persuade them to formally apply for a position.
• Use your new hires as referral sources. The basic premise is that new hires, because they generally come from other similar organizations, know and can successfully influence top-performing colleagues to consider your organization.
• When you have identified a “must-have individual for a critical position,” have the CEO or other senior executive outside of the HR function call that individual up and sell them on your organization. The “executive call” is so effective because it provides the "wow factor" in the recruiting processes.
• Bottom line… the search for talent must be made a part of the organizational culture, not simply an HR function.
Most organizations have an employee referral program for one simple reason: It's the simplest, most cost effective way to get great hires.
3. Develop Retention Interviews: Retention of your top talent is the most cost effective approach an organization has in its arsenal for the war on talent. Most organizations conduct Exit Interviews, but what about “Retention Interviews”? These are one-on-one interviews held at least once a year (more is better) with long-term employees who have been with the organization for over two years. The purpose of these interviews is to listen to their thoughts about the job, their development, their supervisor, employee benefits, communications, and the cultural conditions of the organization. Ask questions such as: Please tell me some reasons why you stay. What things do you look forward to on your way to work? What can we do more of, or less of, that would make your staying here a long time more likely? The collective response you receive will provide you with useful information you can use to make improvements. Long-term employees need to be reinvigorated. Regularly conduct training sessions that develop their skills, run job rotation programs, and implement career development plans. Develop an “Individual Retention Plan” for your high performance and key job position employees. An organization must manage retention of their best one employee at a time. Perhaps have them conduct training programs and have them become a mentor for a new employee. This additional responsibility will prevent them from becoming stale. Long-term employees can also lose motivation when they feel their work is hindering or intruding on their personal lives. For long-term employees to enjoy their work, they need to see their work as being a good complement to their lives overall. This can be achieved by being a flexible employer. Flexibility options can include working from home, unpaid leave, part-time employment, compressed weeks, and annualized hours, flex time, varying work patterns, and job sharing. One of the least expensive and most productive ways to reduce turnover and retain talent is to take care of your long-term employees. Organizations that are flexible and support the needs of their talented people will attract, retain and grow more successful women and men and help ensure the organizations sustainability and growth.
4. Use Technology: Recruitment should be a focus and clear centerpiece of your organizations web site. This effort should not be limited to simply posting present job openings. Your web site “job board” should be “very easy” to access should clearly “sell” potential candidates about the organizations mission, vision, values and culture. It should present a strong message about how employees are valued and state your commitment to quality and your commitment to customer satisfaction. It is also a place where your organization should provide useful information that a potential candidate can gather to help them in their decision to apply for a position. Once you have your candidate’s attention, you also need to provide a way for candidates to easily submit resumes for consideration for present and future positions. Most high potential individuals believe the web is their most important tool in networking with others and organizations. It is an absolute must that your organization does not miss out on using correctly this important tool. Additionally, Post your open positions on professional association websites. This includes posting on local chapter websites or professional associations related to the job. (This is an excellent method for finding local talent.) Also do not forget local college and university web site job boards. Bottom line… Use technology we live in a wired world.
5. Spend “Extra Effort” on Employee Orientation: A very effective and underused practice in retention is a “strong orientation” after recruitment program. This refers to structured and planned measures aimed at engaging the new employee from the beginning until they are well assimilated into the organization. Once candidates have been hired, make sure they receive selected pieces of intra-company communication, including employee handbooks, benefits information and information on products and what makes the brand of your company unique. Make sure new employees understand the relevance of their work, including how it fits within the organization and serves the customer. Continually answer any questions they may have. After two or three weeks, have a senior level manager spend a few minutes with each new employee providing more organizational insight, asking how they are doing and fielding questions. This helps to reinforce the person’s decision to come to work for your organization, makes them feel special and provides added support and encouragement. After six to eight weeks have their immediate manager/supervisor review performance expectations with new employees, also asking for candid self-assessment. Ensure at this time that they feel their training has been adequate and coach as necessary. Decisions about staying in a job or leaving it frequently come down to whether the organization, through its leaders, takes an acute personal interest in the individual. This interest manifests itself through measures such as regular and honest appraisal discussions, personal coaching, personalized development plans, and support for personally initiated projects and interests. A very organized and attentive orientation lasting months into the new hires tenure is a must for the Y Generation.
6. Develop Creative Compensation: In today's world, you must be competitive in your compensation package to attract and hold quality employees. Pay cannot be too far off the mark; however, you need to keep salaries both competitive and in line with organizational objectives. With this in mind, what pay-for-performance bonuses can be offered for achieving certain specific goals? What bonuses can be offered for completing a job ahead of schedule or generating additional profit? The organization will most often benefit more from the performance-oriented approach than the time-oriented approach. In addition to or in place of cash what non-cash financial retention measures can your organization consider? One of the most precious commodities is time, particularly time off from work. Can four 10 hour shifts replace five 8 hour shifts providing both a day off and saving one days transportation cost. This approach tells employees, if you help the company with profit, we will pay you proportionately and we are willing where possible to change our work schedule to save the employee transportation costs and provide more time off.
7. Embrace Internships: Internships of both faculty and students can provide an excellent service to the community and to the organization. Internship learning experiences are just as important for teachers as for their students. Faculty interns can bring expertise to your organization and return to the classroom with real-world experience to better educate students and to advise them of job opportunities. Workplace internships of weeks and even months can provide teachers with an opportunity to apply theory to reality, and to help companies gain valuable expertise and a recruiting edge. Faculty internships can also provide much needed additional pay to the faculty members who want to participate in an internship program. Hiring students affords the student an opportunity to truly experience the work environment and offers the organization a “try-before-buy” opportunity.
8. Focus Effort on the Young: A planned and well orchestrate recruitment process needs to be developed aimed toward educating and getting the interest of the young people – high school and community college age. This is an excellent target group as they represent the next big wave of workers. Employers and employees can help create interest in careers by going into the classroom and speaking to the students, conducting “job shadow” experiences, work-site tours, educators-in-the-workplace days, work with the local educators to build work based skills curriculum and actively support and sponsor job and career fairs both on-site and at the schools. Most teachers, parents and students do not have a clear understanding of what types of jobs/careers are available. Most students when asked say they are going on to college, but in reality 72% never graduate. With the proper high school preparation and some post secondary training and education/certification a large portion of these “floating or in-transient students” could become productive employees if the business community would offer practical career guidance. Many of the young people simply want a job and upon entering the workforce want to be mentored, coached, taught new technology and processes and work in challenging and interesting careers. Consequently, it might be useful to develop some type of rotation program that offers many of your present employees the opportunity to work with young new employees on projects and use different technology on a somewhat regular basis. This formalized “on-the-job” training would allow employees and new hires to feel that their roles are important, flexible and that they are staying on the cutting edge technologically and building the future talent of the organization. Formal on-the-job initial and advanced cross training will incur some costs but those costs will be negated by increased job satisfaction, increased flexibility in your workforce and higher recruiting and retention rates.
9. Focus Effort on the Old: Many older workers will not retire. A Merrill Lynch survey reports that about 76 percent of baby boomer's say they want to continue working in some capacity after they reach retirement age. Nearly seven in ten workers expect to continue to work full-time or part-time following retirement from their main job. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2012, the number of workers 55 years and older is expected to grow by nearly 50 percent, far out pacing increases in the number of workers aged 16 to 54. By 2012, workers 55 years and older will make up about 20 percent of the labor force. These older workers are some of the most gifted, brightest, skilled and well-educated group of men and women in the history of this country. Some industries are already feeling the pinch, like nursing and engineering. To take advantage of this workforce, employers need to actively recruit this population to either stay on in full time employment or entice them with flex and part-time hours. They also need to actively incentivize this group to mentor, teach and coach the younger generations with their knowledge and expertise. The general myth is that young people are more productive than older; young people are healthier and that young people are a more worthy investment because they are younger and will be around for a longer time. When you only look at speed or physical strength as measures of productivity, then you could probably conclude that older workers are less valuable than younger; however, younger workers job hop at a high rate. If you widen the equation to include experience, loyalty and being responsible, older workers fare very well.
10. Hire a Veteran: The military, both retired and those who have served honorably for two to six years offer a great recruitment opportunity. Also look at retired Fire and Policemen. They meet the drug, felony and education screening requirements. They have a proven track record of loyalty and excellent work ethic. Those who are retired have a supplemental income which can help offset cost of living. Many are seeking a new career after serving in a high stress environment. They are and will be good corporate and solid citizens.
11. Hire the Disabled: There is an eager workforce waiting to be hired. That workforce features employees who’ve probably been looking for employment for an extended period of time. Once the disabled find employers they do extremely well because they want to not only keep their jobs, but they want to prove they can do the job… and do the job well. Many employers fear that there will be a high cost to accommodate disabled employees, but the average cost of accommodating the disabled is $500.00 or less (61%) and for many the cost is under a hundred dollars (29%). Quite often there are no accommodations that need to be made for disabled workers…just acceptance. Many employers interview during this study stated that new employees especially the young don’t seem to care about their jobs or have a poor work ethic. The disabled represent a good resource of workers who are ready, willing, anxious, determined and able, they just looking for an opportunity. Additionally, there are funded training programs available to employers who hire the disabled.
12. Hire Minorities: The minority population continues to offer some great recruitment possibilities as well. One of the best ways to hire minorities is to encourage those minorities who you already employ to refer their friends, family members and relatives. Just like your non-minority employees, your minority employees are members of religious, social and community organizations. These connections afford your organization networking opportunities where you can reach out to discover potential employees. Because of geographical as well as financial and cultural obstacles, many minorities are disadvantaged from the start. Having access to current information on job skills and requirements, and knowing people already employed, can be very important when attempting to attract minorities to your organization. Networking Business, organizations, and individuals help bridge the gap.
13. Develop Culture, Reputation and Work Environment: One of the most important and yet overlooked recruitment and retention tools any organization has is its cultural environment, an environment in which people feel valued, connected to their teammates and clients, are accountable and included. Your best retention strategy then becomes a word-of-mouth attraction strategy. You want to create a place where everyone has an opportunity to contribute and be heard, to give people opportunities to broaden their skill sets and contribute to the largest capability they have. When you create an environment where people feel that the work they do is valued and they’re esteemed as individuals, they’ll not only stay with you, but they’re likely to spread the word. Design and develop a company-wide "recruiting culture," where literally every employee is made aware of their responsibility to be continually trolling for talent. Top performers in particular care about working at an organization with a solid reputation, because they want to keep their own track record clean. A great corporate culture goes a long way toward becoming the employer of choice which then becomes a powerful recruitment and retention tool. A very basic approach to developing your organizational culture is to have clear mission, vision and value statements which are well understood by all and especially modeled by anyone in a leadership role at all levels within the organization. Several studies confirm that there is a link between a company’s reputation and employee job performance. Organizational cultures and reputation are built on talking the talk and more importantly walking the walk. Yes, this is very basic… but very important.
14. Sell Your Green Concern: If your organization can brag about its environmental savvy, be sure to communicate this to applicants. And don’t just rely on your Web site; make the environment a discussion point during your job interview process. Environmental sensitivity is one way for potential and full time employees to assess how an organization is in concert with current issues and concerns. It shows that this organization cares for something more than just profits or its mission. The goal is to honestly boost your organizations profile especially among the Y Generation. Plug environmental successes in wherever possible; recruiting advertisements, during interviews with applicants, and in job descriptions. Raise your stature as a “green resource” by getting quoted in the press. Encourage your current employees to be sensitive to and engaged in environmental issues. They will help spread your organizations environmental message.
15. Feature Articles: Feature stories about your organization in the local or distant newspaper or industry related magazines can increase interest especially if they cite growth. Your need for certain types of employees with the associated talents, skills, and knowledge can be imbedded in the articles. This approach serves as a newsworthy article and lets the audience know you are growing and hiring. Keep in mind that newspaper stories about your company reach many more people than classified ads. The goal is for the whole community to know your company’s name and to think of it as a great place to work.
16. Get the Word Out: Get the word out in as many places as possible. Generate as much buzz and publicity as possible anywhere and everywhere potential talent may be hanging out. Post fliers in health clubs, libraries, schools, grocery stores, church bulletins, local service and social organizations, place ads in news letters of the local chamber, economic development council and professional and social organizations.
17. Create an Alumni Program: No matter how good you think your organization is some of your good employees think they can find a better job. Always keep the door open for your good employees to return. Stay in touch with former employees, they may be ready to come back after looking for greener pastures. Send them news letters or emails about exciting things that are occurring in their past organization. They may not return, but may encourage their friends to seek employment opportunities at the last great company they worked for.
18. Hire from your Competitors: Business is a competitive game and those with the best talent win. Hiring unemployed people and people from non-competitors has merit if they are truly top talent, but generally it pales in comparison alongside the impact of hiring away your competitor’s top talent. In a talent war there’s only one way win, and that is to hire and retain the best talent! Why hire your competitors Talent? Your talent pool goes up immediately and theirs goes down proportionately. Your organization can directly learn from their techniques and approaches. It forces you to pay close attention to your own top performers in order to keep the competitors from poaching them away. It forces them to pay extra time and resources toward retaining their own employees… and you might even get a few customers along with the new employee An opportune time to go after your competitor’s talent is when they are undergoing disruptive events such as a layoff, merger or acquisition, a change in benefits or an incentive plan, or simply a business downturn. These types of events tend to make top talent frustrated and unhappy with the uncertainty. And ready to make a move to a more successful organization. If you can hire away one great employee they can be a solid source to provide names of others who are ready to also move.
19. Leadership Education and Succession Planning: Executive or leadership training and development should be seen as an investment in a firm’s future and not just an expense on the balance sheet. More and more organizations are realizing the benefits of executive education as a way of ensuring the best-trained leaders are steering the business forward. A lot of leadership development activities are based around thinking about what jobs should people be moving to next, in order to best develop them for future opportunities. Long-term financial gains can be enormous if succession plans are in place for all individuals in a leadership role as staff leave or retire. In fact, succession planning is a key strategy to any successful retention program. Being able to develop and promote staff from within is a valuable and cost effective asset at an organization’s disposal. It also demonstrates the organizations intent to take care of and develop their best talent for more advanced leadership roles. Many high potential individuals will stay if the organization takes the time, money and effort to continually develop their leadership talent for both present and future use within the organization. As well as this, education builds up the individual business, culture and organizational skills, which can be passed on to the next generation of up and coming leaders.
20. Additional Thoughts: If your organization is hiring, make sure anyone who hands out a business card lets the receiving individual know the organization is hiring. Ask employees to let the organization know if they hear of co-workers who are thinking about quitting. This early warning detection system can provide the organization an opportunity to possibly convince the individual to stay or at the very least find out if the organization is at fault and fix the problem. Additionally, don’t string potential employees along; make sure you have a solid, thorough, but fast hiring processes or the good candidates may get away. And… continue regular communications with your best talent, take care of them and they will take care of the organization!
Finally, People normally do not leave a job; they leave poor management and poor organizational cultures. Every organization, no matter how great you are, can improve in these areas. It is important, now, more than ever, to focus on these issues if you want to recruit and retain top talent or at the very least… the talent you need to survive.
The following additional information is provided to aid organizations on their recruiting efforts. The chart demonstrates the methods deemed most successful as the percentage of recruiters citing their organization’s level of satisfaction with the return on investment it receives from the following sources of applicants.
Employee referrals 82%
Organization's Web site 71%
Campus recruiting 60%
Niche job boards 58%
General job boards 51%
Search firms 42%
Networking technology 36%
Commercial résumé databases 33%
Career fairs 30%
Newspapers 15%
Note: January 2006 survey of 73 large employers with a mean of 139,000 applicants during 2005.
Source: Direct Employers/Booz Allen Hamilton
This chart can be helpful as you target certain age groups, which will become more important as the age demographics of the American workforce continue to change.
Top attraction drivers by age group for U.S. employees, 2007
Ages 18-29 Ages 30-44 Ages 45-54 Age 55+
Competitive base pay 1 1 1 2
Career advancement opportunities 2 4 6 9
Salary increases linked to
individual performance 3 5 5 4
Competitive health care benefits 4 2 2 1
Work/life balance 5 3 4 6
Learning and
development opportunities 6 10 -- --
Caliber of co-worker 7 9 9 7
Reputation of the organization
as a good employer 8 8 8 8
Challenging work 9 7 7 5
Competitive retirement benefits 10 6 3 3
Organization's financial health -- -- 10 10
Source: Towers Perrin
Cost of Turnover Calculator
ESSENTIAL DATA
Employee's classification:______________
Employee's hourly pay rate:______________
Employee's supervisor pay rate:______________
Corporate office staff pay rate:______________ (may be an average)
HARD COSTS
Pre-Departure
Separation processing Administrative time: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Vacancy Costs
Coworker burden Overtime; Added shifts: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Hiring search firm or temp. agency: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Developing advertisement(s) Administrative time: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Placing advertisement Cost of advertising space(s): Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Selection & Sign-On
Interviewing: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Reference checking: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Drug testing/psychological testing: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Orientation & on-the-job training: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Total “Hard Costs” of Turnover = $________
SOFT COSTS
Pre-Departure
Lost productivity of departing employee
(Exiting employee performance at 50%-75%): Hours _____x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of co-workers:Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Increased time discussing departure and organizational conditions Increased work load for employees: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of supervisor: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $_______
During Vacancy
Lost productivity of vacant position Overtime Added shifts: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of supervisor Time spent filling in: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Recruiting administration Supervisor's time with Schedule changes/overtime:
Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Selection and Sign-On
Lost productivity during training Replacement requires Support/direction:
Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of co-workers Existing employees distracted: Hours _____ x Wages $_____= $________
Lost productivity of supervisor: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Total “Soft Costs” of Turnover: = $________
TOTAL COST OF TURNING OVER ONE EMPLOYEE
Hard Costs + Soft Costs = $________
FORMULA FOR ANNUAL TURNOVER COST
Number of exiting employees ________ x cost of turnover (hard + soft) $_________ = $________
Conclusion
Today’s leaders must manage the scarce commodity called talent to sustain their competitive edge. The organization with the best talent wins. With a labor shortage expected to hit 10 million workers by 2010, and 43% of our labor force eligible to retire in the next decade, the demand for talent is expected to outweigh supply by 20% through 2015. Talent management remains one of management’s highest priorities. Employee turnover is the silent killer of organizational productivity. Like every business solution, answers come from reliable data and analysis and the desire to develop a strategy and tactics to address the problem. Hopefully you will take the necessary steps to protect your organization in the very real war for scarce talent and future success. The ROI on talent recruitment and retention is real!
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Roger M. Ingbretsen, Author, Speaker, Leadership Coach, Organizational and career developer For more information, visit www.ingbretsen.com or call 509 999 7008.
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Has your organization developed in writing a formal strategic recruitment and retention plan? Recruitment and retention of employees requires a formal plan. It’s simply another strategy today's aggressive and successful organizations must have in place. In our present booming economy, organizations have to compete for the best talent available. Once they've attracted that talent, the challenge becomes keeping these people in the face of a steady flow of calls from other organizations and headhunters armed with tempting offers. The key opportunity for organizations is to establish clear links between workforce planning, recruiting, and retention through integrated and strategic programs.
Through surveys and one-on-one interviews, it has been confirmed that most organizations use fairly traditional recruiting and retention processes (newspaper ads, some web site ads, and some referral programs). Unlike traditional recruiting, which merely reacts to business pressure; aggressive recruiting takes the strategic responsibility for driving the organization’s performance.
As with any highly specialized activity, success in running an aggressive recruiting and retention campaign is largely dependent on flawless execution of a short list of factors. These factors include: Dedication by senior leadership to adjust corporate culture and management styles, to meet the changing demands of the talent population, dedication of needed recruiting and retention resources, senior-level support, and an unrelenting focus on execution.
Only those organizations with the best recruiting and retention policies will succeed in the talent economy. Recruiting and retention are interconnected. When an organization is trying to “retain” talent, it is in fact “attracting” talent as well. Thus, recruiting and retention should not be addressed as disparate policies, but rather as one “strategic talent” policy.
A basic and most important recruiting tactic to employ, especially in a tight labor market, is to take good care of the talent you have. This is not just a matter of wages and benefits, but also encompasses keeping the work meaningful, interesting and challenging and truly demonstrating in a genuine manner your appreciation for what your present staff continues to accomplish on a daily basis. Most organizations do this to some degree, but it is a point worth mentioning because it is a critical strategy in the war for talent. Good solid employees rarely leave good solid organizations where they are appreciated.
The following list provides some guidelines in your search to identify your organizations top talent and the type of talent you wish to hire.
Twelve Traits of Top Talent:
1. They have a great attitude.
2. They want to make a difference.
3. They set high and lofty goals.
4. They don’t settle for the status quo.
5. They attack problems not people.
6. They have an entrepreneurial and innovative spirit.
7. They have the ability to focus intently on reaching their goals.
8. They keep their eyes on the big picture.
9. They have a predisposition for tenacity.
10. They see available resources and to use them accordingly.
11. They know when to lead and when to follow.
12. They have a critical skill your organization needs.
Talent: This is the sum of a person’s abilities – his or her intrinsic gifts, knowledge, skills, experience, attitude, judgment, character and drive. It also includes his or her ability to learn, change and grow.
The following twenty actions are provided to stimulate a more aggressive recruiting and retention process in a tight labor market. Brainstorm in your organization and add to the list and/or see what the best fit is for your mission, vision and culture. The war for talent has heated up and appears to be a campaign which will last for a long time. The acquisition and retention of a productive talent pool will require continual aggressive tactics.
Strategies and Tactics Which can be applied to: Recruiting and Retaining Talent
1. Managers “Must” be an Integral Part of the Recruiting and Retention Process: First and foremost… the best and quickest way to reduce employee turnover is for managers to be “very involved” in employee hiring and retention. “There is a direct link between turnover and level of manager/employee face-to-face engagement” (The Gallup Organization). The key to successfully retaining a talented staff lies in initially hiring the most talented individuals for management positions and then training them in the skills required to effectively lead their subordinates. The manager’s role is to identify and release the unique talents and skills within each employee and help channel these talents and skills to the benefit of both the company and individuals. Only by recruiting, identifying the employee’s talents and retaining that talent, can the manager achieve the organizations goals and satisfy clients’ needs. A great manager listens to their employees and preemptively acts to prevent problems, seeks information and ideas from their employees and acts to continually improve conditions on all levels. Managers/supervisors at all levels need to be trained in how to help reduce turnover. First, the managers/supervisors must understand the numbers, the “cost of turnover” in their organization and what they mean to the company and to themselves personally. (See “Cost of Turnover Calculator” at end of this paper) Managers/supervisors are not necessarily proficient at retention-oriented leadership unless someone helps them along the path and makes it part of their performance metric. Training should include scenarios of how things might be different with more or less turnover so they can appreciate the benefits of workforce stability and the role they play in maintaining that stability. The organization should provide coaching to help managers improve the way they work to hire and retain their people. Managers must accept the fact that to a large degree employee turnover is their responsibility. To the greatest extent possible managers should:
• Provide a workplace where people feel respected and valued.
• Provide a workplace where employee ideas and efforts are noticed and considered important and where talent is recognized, promoted and celebrated.
• Provide less bureaucracy, less red tape to make decisions.
• Adopt a management style that is inclusive and recognizes the value that the individual brings to the shared success of the organization.
The organization should set up a reward system for managers based upon turnover in their area of responsibility. Reward achievement of agreed-upon retention goals using cash, trophies, certificates and plaques, or simply public recognition. These awards should be bestowed by senior managers as part of their role in inspiring, guiding and coaching managers/supervisors to higher levels of “retention performance and accountability.”
2. Institute a Fair Referral Program: An employee referral program can be and, most likely, should be your organization's best source of hires. Whether you're a large or small organization, employee referrals deliver the best quality hires via the most cost effective channel. In an increasing number of surveys, a well defined formalized employee referral program is constantly cited as the number one recruitment tool. Good employees will recommend other people who will be good employees… because their reputation is on the line. Your employees are out in the community and meet potential employees through church, school, neighborhood and community activities. Constantly communicate to your employees the fact that you have a referral program through meetings and email. Keep the program simple. Encourage your employees to recommend their friends and family members by offering referral fees. Additionally, put anyone’s name that refers an employee who is hired into a hat, to become eligible for a quarterly $1,000 prize.
NOTE: The most recent research comes to the conclusion that referrals consistently produce the highest-quality candidates of any recruiting source. To take advantage of this fact the following steps can enhance your organizations referral process.
• Identify the top performers that currently work in the job areas for which you are recruiting.
• Invite these top performers to identify the names of the very best individuals they know.
• After identifying the names, ask these top performers to help you contact these individuals and persuade them to formally apply for a position.
• Use your new hires as referral sources. The basic premise is that new hires, because they generally come from other similar organizations, know and can successfully influence top-performing colleagues to consider your organization.
• When you have identified a “must-have individual for a critical position,” have the CEO or other senior executive outside of the HR function call that individual up and sell them on your organization. The “executive call” is so effective because it provides the "wow factor" in the recruiting processes.
• Bottom line… the search for talent must be made a part of the organizational culture, not simply an HR function.
Most organizations have an employee referral program for one simple reason: It's the simplest, most cost effective way to get great hires.
3. Develop Retention Interviews: Retention of your top talent is the most cost effective approach an organization has in its arsenal for the war on talent. Most organizations conduct Exit Interviews, but what about “Retention Interviews”? These are one-on-one interviews held at least once a year (more is better) with long-term employees who have been with the organization for over two years. The purpose of these interviews is to listen to their thoughts about the job, their development, their supervisor, employee benefits, communications, and the cultural conditions of the organization. Ask questions such as: Please tell me some reasons why you stay. What things do you look forward to on your way to work? What can we do more of, or less of, that would make your staying here a long time more likely? The collective response you receive will provide you with useful information you can use to make improvements. Long-term employees need to be reinvigorated. Regularly conduct training sessions that develop their skills, run job rotation programs, and implement career development plans. Develop an “Individual Retention Plan” for your high performance and key job position employees. An organization must manage retention of their best one employee at a time. Perhaps have them conduct training programs and have them become a mentor for a new employee. This additional responsibility will prevent them from becoming stale. Long-term employees can also lose motivation when they feel their work is hindering or intruding on their personal lives. For long-term employees to enjoy their work, they need to see their work as being a good complement to their lives overall. This can be achieved by being a flexible employer. Flexibility options can include working from home, unpaid leave, part-time employment, compressed weeks, and annualized hours, flex time, varying work patterns, and job sharing. One of the least expensive and most productive ways to reduce turnover and retain talent is to take care of your long-term employees. Organizations that are flexible and support the needs of their talented people will attract, retain and grow more successful women and men and help ensure the organizations sustainability and growth.
4. Use Technology: Recruitment should be a focus and clear centerpiece of your organizations web site. This effort should not be limited to simply posting present job openings. Your web site “job board” should be “very easy” to access should clearly “sell” potential candidates about the organizations mission, vision, values and culture. It should present a strong message about how employees are valued and state your commitment to quality and your commitment to customer satisfaction. It is also a place where your organization should provide useful information that a potential candidate can gather to help them in their decision to apply for a position. Once you have your candidate’s attention, you also need to provide a way for candidates to easily submit resumes for consideration for present and future positions. Most high potential individuals believe the web is their most important tool in networking with others and organizations. It is an absolute must that your organization does not miss out on using correctly this important tool. Additionally, Post your open positions on professional association websites. This includes posting on local chapter websites or professional associations related to the job. (This is an excellent method for finding local talent.) Also do not forget local college and university web site job boards. Bottom line… Use technology we live in a wired world.
5. Spend “Extra Effort” on Employee Orientation: A very effective and underused practice in retention is a “strong orientation” after recruitment program. This refers to structured and planned measures aimed at engaging the new employee from the beginning until they are well assimilated into the organization. Once candidates have been hired, make sure they receive selected pieces of intra-company communication, including employee handbooks, benefits information and information on products and what makes the brand of your company unique. Make sure new employees understand the relevance of their work, including how it fits within the organization and serves the customer. Continually answer any questions they may have. After two or three weeks, have a senior level manager spend a few minutes with each new employee providing more organizational insight, asking how they are doing and fielding questions. This helps to reinforce the person’s decision to come to work for your organization, makes them feel special and provides added support and encouragement. After six to eight weeks have their immediate manager/supervisor review performance expectations with new employees, also asking for candid self-assessment. Ensure at this time that they feel their training has been adequate and coach as necessary. Decisions about staying in a job or leaving it frequently come down to whether the organization, through its leaders, takes an acute personal interest in the individual. This interest manifests itself through measures such as regular and honest appraisal discussions, personal coaching, personalized development plans, and support for personally initiated projects and interests. A very organized and attentive orientation lasting months into the new hires tenure is a must for the Y Generation.
6. Develop Creative Compensation: In today's world, you must be competitive in your compensation package to attract and hold quality employees. Pay cannot be too far off the mark; however, you need to keep salaries both competitive and in line with organizational objectives. With this in mind, what pay-for-performance bonuses can be offered for achieving certain specific goals? What bonuses can be offered for completing a job ahead of schedule or generating additional profit? The organization will most often benefit more from the performance-oriented approach than the time-oriented approach. In addition to or in place of cash what non-cash financial retention measures can your organization consider? One of the most precious commodities is time, particularly time off from work. Can four 10 hour shifts replace five 8 hour shifts providing both a day off and saving one days transportation cost. This approach tells employees, if you help the company with profit, we will pay you proportionately and we are willing where possible to change our work schedule to save the employee transportation costs and provide more time off.
7. Embrace Internships: Internships of both faculty and students can provide an excellent service to the community and to the organization. Internship learning experiences are just as important for teachers as for their students. Faculty interns can bring expertise to your organization and return to the classroom with real-world experience to better educate students and to advise them of job opportunities. Workplace internships of weeks and even months can provide teachers with an opportunity to apply theory to reality, and to help companies gain valuable expertise and a recruiting edge. Faculty internships can also provide much needed additional pay to the faculty members who want to participate in an internship program. Hiring students affords the student an opportunity to truly experience the work environment and offers the organization a “try-before-buy” opportunity.
8. Focus Effort on the Young: A planned and well orchestrate recruitment process needs to be developed aimed toward educating and getting the interest of the young people – high school and community college age. This is an excellent target group as they represent the next big wave of workers. Employers and employees can help create interest in careers by going into the classroom and speaking to the students, conducting “job shadow” experiences, work-site tours, educators-in-the-workplace days, work with the local educators to build work based skills curriculum and actively support and sponsor job and career fairs both on-site and at the schools. Most teachers, parents and students do not have a clear understanding of what types of jobs/careers are available. Most students when asked say they are going on to college, but in reality 72% never graduate. With the proper high school preparation and some post secondary training and education/certification a large portion of these “floating or in-transient students” could become productive employees if the business community would offer practical career guidance. Many of the young people simply want a job and upon entering the workforce want to be mentored, coached, taught new technology and processes and work in challenging and interesting careers. Consequently, it might be useful to develop some type of rotation program that offers many of your present employees the opportunity to work with young new employees on projects and use different technology on a somewhat regular basis. This formalized “on-the-job” training would allow employees and new hires to feel that their roles are important, flexible and that they are staying on the cutting edge technologically and building the future talent of the organization. Formal on-the-job initial and advanced cross training will incur some costs but those costs will be negated by increased job satisfaction, increased flexibility in your workforce and higher recruiting and retention rates.
9. Focus Effort on the Old: Many older workers will not retire. A Merrill Lynch survey reports that about 76 percent of baby boomer's say they want to continue working in some capacity after they reach retirement age. Nearly seven in ten workers expect to continue to work full-time or part-time following retirement from their main job. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2012, the number of workers 55 years and older is expected to grow by nearly 50 percent, far out pacing increases in the number of workers aged 16 to 54. By 2012, workers 55 years and older will make up about 20 percent of the labor force. These older workers are some of the most gifted, brightest, skilled and well-educated group of men and women in the history of this country. Some industries are already feeling the pinch, like nursing and engineering. To take advantage of this workforce, employers need to actively recruit this population to either stay on in full time employment or entice them with flex and part-time hours. They also need to actively incentivize this group to mentor, teach and coach the younger generations with their knowledge and expertise. The general myth is that young people are more productive than older; young people are healthier and that young people are a more worthy investment because they are younger and will be around for a longer time. When you only look at speed or physical strength as measures of productivity, then you could probably conclude that older workers are less valuable than younger; however, younger workers job hop at a high rate. If you widen the equation to include experience, loyalty and being responsible, older workers fare very well.
10. Hire a Veteran: The military, both retired and those who have served honorably for two to six years offer a great recruitment opportunity. Also look at retired Fire and Policemen. They meet the drug, felony and education screening requirements. They have a proven track record of loyalty and excellent work ethic. Those who are retired have a supplemental income which can help offset cost of living. Many are seeking a new career after serving in a high stress environment. They are and will be good corporate and solid citizens.
11. Hire the Disabled: There is an eager workforce waiting to be hired. That workforce features employees who’ve probably been looking for employment for an extended period of time. Once the disabled find employers they do extremely well because they want to not only keep their jobs, but they want to prove they can do the job… and do the job well. Many employers fear that there will be a high cost to accommodate disabled employees, but the average cost of accommodating the disabled is $500.00 or less (61%) and for many the cost is under a hundred dollars (29%). Quite often there are no accommodations that need to be made for disabled workers…just acceptance. Many employers interview during this study stated that new employees especially the young don’t seem to care about their jobs or have a poor work ethic. The disabled represent a good resource of workers who are ready, willing, anxious, determined and able, they just looking for an opportunity. Additionally, there are funded training programs available to employers who hire the disabled.
12. Hire Minorities: The minority population continues to offer some great recruitment possibilities as well. One of the best ways to hire minorities is to encourage those minorities who you already employ to refer their friends, family members and relatives. Just like your non-minority employees, your minority employees are members of religious, social and community organizations. These connections afford your organization networking opportunities where you can reach out to discover potential employees. Because of geographical as well as financial and cultural obstacles, many minorities are disadvantaged from the start. Having access to current information on job skills and requirements, and knowing people already employed, can be very important when attempting to attract minorities to your organization. Networking Business, organizations, and individuals help bridge the gap.
13. Develop Culture, Reputation and Work Environment: One of the most important and yet overlooked recruitment and retention tools any organization has is its cultural environment, an environment in which people feel valued, connected to their teammates and clients, are accountable and included. Your best retention strategy then becomes a word-of-mouth attraction strategy. You want to create a place where everyone has an opportunity to contribute and be heard, to give people opportunities to broaden their skill sets and contribute to the largest capability they have. When you create an environment where people feel that the work they do is valued and they’re esteemed as individuals, they’ll not only stay with you, but they’re likely to spread the word. Design and develop a company-wide "recruiting culture," where literally every employee is made aware of their responsibility to be continually trolling for talent. Top performers in particular care about working at an organization with a solid reputation, because they want to keep their own track record clean. A great corporate culture goes a long way toward becoming the employer of choice which then becomes a powerful recruitment and retention tool. A very basic approach to developing your organizational culture is to have clear mission, vision and value statements which are well understood by all and especially modeled by anyone in a leadership role at all levels within the organization. Several studies confirm that there is a link between a company’s reputation and employee job performance. Organizational cultures and reputation are built on talking the talk and more importantly walking the walk. Yes, this is very basic… but very important.
14. Sell Your Green Concern: If your organization can brag about its environmental savvy, be sure to communicate this to applicants. And don’t just rely on your Web site; make the environment a discussion point during your job interview process. Environmental sensitivity is one way for potential and full time employees to assess how an organization is in concert with current issues and concerns. It shows that this organization cares for something more than just profits or its mission. The goal is to honestly boost your organizations profile especially among the Y Generation. Plug environmental successes in wherever possible; recruiting advertisements, during interviews with applicants, and in job descriptions. Raise your stature as a “green resource” by getting quoted in the press. Encourage your current employees to be sensitive to and engaged in environmental issues. They will help spread your organizations environmental message.
15. Feature Articles: Feature stories about your organization in the local or distant newspaper or industry related magazines can increase interest especially if they cite growth. Your need for certain types of employees with the associated talents, skills, and knowledge can be imbedded in the articles. This approach serves as a newsworthy article and lets the audience know you are growing and hiring. Keep in mind that newspaper stories about your company reach many more people than classified ads. The goal is for the whole community to know your company’s name and to think of it as a great place to work.
16. Get the Word Out: Get the word out in as many places as possible. Generate as much buzz and publicity as possible anywhere and everywhere potential talent may be hanging out. Post fliers in health clubs, libraries, schools, grocery stores, church bulletins, local service and social organizations, place ads in news letters of the local chamber, economic development council and professional and social organizations.
17. Create an Alumni Program: No matter how good you think your organization is some of your good employees think they can find a better job. Always keep the door open for your good employees to return. Stay in touch with former employees, they may be ready to come back after looking for greener pastures. Send them news letters or emails about exciting things that are occurring in their past organization. They may not return, but may encourage their friends to seek employment opportunities at the last great company they worked for.
18. Hire from your Competitors: Business is a competitive game and those with the best talent win. Hiring unemployed people and people from non-competitors has merit if they are truly top talent, but generally it pales in comparison alongside the impact of hiring away your competitor’s top talent. In a talent war there’s only one way win, and that is to hire and retain the best talent! Why hire your competitors Talent? Your talent pool goes up immediately and theirs goes down proportionately. Your organization can directly learn from their techniques and approaches. It forces you to pay close attention to your own top performers in order to keep the competitors from poaching them away. It forces them to pay extra time and resources toward retaining their own employees… and you might even get a few customers along with the new employee An opportune time to go after your competitor’s talent is when they are undergoing disruptive events such as a layoff, merger or acquisition, a change in benefits or an incentive plan, or simply a business downturn. These types of events tend to make top talent frustrated and unhappy with the uncertainty. And ready to make a move to a more successful organization. If you can hire away one great employee they can be a solid source to provide names of others who are ready to also move.
19. Leadership Education and Succession Planning: Executive or leadership training and development should be seen as an investment in a firm’s future and not just an expense on the balance sheet. More and more organizations are realizing the benefits of executive education as a way of ensuring the best-trained leaders are steering the business forward. A lot of leadership development activities are based around thinking about what jobs should people be moving to next, in order to best develop them for future opportunities. Long-term financial gains can be enormous if succession plans are in place for all individuals in a leadership role as staff leave or retire. In fact, succession planning is a key strategy to any successful retention program. Being able to develop and promote staff from within is a valuable and cost effective asset at an organization’s disposal. It also demonstrates the organizations intent to take care of and develop their best talent for more advanced leadership roles. Many high potential individuals will stay if the organization takes the time, money and effort to continually develop their leadership talent for both present and future use within the organization. As well as this, education builds up the individual business, culture and organizational skills, which can be passed on to the next generation of up and coming leaders.
20. Additional Thoughts: If your organization is hiring, make sure anyone who hands out a business card lets the receiving individual know the organization is hiring. Ask employees to let the organization know if they hear of co-workers who are thinking about quitting. This early warning detection system can provide the organization an opportunity to possibly convince the individual to stay or at the very least find out if the organization is at fault and fix the problem. Additionally, don’t string potential employees along; make sure you have a solid, thorough, but fast hiring processes or the good candidates may get away. And… continue regular communications with your best talent, take care of them and they will take care of the organization!
Finally, People normally do not leave a job; they leave poor management and poor organizational cultures. Every organization, no matter how great you are, can improve in these areas. It is important, now, more than ever, to focus on these issues if you want to recruit and retain top talent or at the very least… the talent you need to survive.
The following additional information is provided to aid organizations on their recruiting efforts. The chart demonstrates the methods deemed most successful as the percentage of recruiters citing their organization’s level of satisfaction with the return on investment it receives from the following sources of applicants.
Employee referrals 82%
Organization's Web site 71%
Campus recruiting 60%
Niche job boards 58%
General job boards 51%
Search firms 42%
Networking technology 36%
Commercial résumé databases 33%
Career fairs 30%
Newspapers 15%
Note: January 2006 survey of 73 large employers with a mean of 139,000 applicants during 2005.
Source: Direct Employers/Booz Allen Hamilton
This chart can be helpful as you target certain age groups, which will become more important as the age demographics of the American workforce continue to change.
Top attraction drivers by age group for U.S. employees, 2007
Ages 18-29 Ages 30-44 Ages 45-54 Age 55+
Competitive base pay 1 1 1 2
Career advancement opportunities 2 4 6 9
Salary increases linked to
individual performance 3 5 5 4
Competitive health care benefits 4 2 2 1
Work/life balance 5 3 4 6
Learning and
development opportunities 6 10 -- --
Caliber of co-worker 7 9 9 7
Reputation of the organization
as a good employer 8 8 8 8
Challenging work 9 7 7 5
Competitive retirement benefits 10 6 3 3
Organization's financial health -- -- 10 10
Source: Towers Perrin
Cost of Turnover Calculator
ESSENTIAL DATA
Employee's classification:______________
Employee's hourly pay rate:______________
Employee's supervisor pay rate:______________
Corporate office staff pay rate:______________ (may be an average)
HARD COSTS
Pre-Departure
Separation processing Administrative time: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Vacancy Costs
Coworker burden Overtime; Added shifts: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Hiring search firm or temp. agency: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Developing advertisement(s) Administrative time: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Placing advertisement Cost of advertising space(s): Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Selection & Sign-On
Interviewing: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Reference checking: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Drug testing/psychological testing: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Orientation & on-the-job training: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Total “Hard Costs” of Turnover = $________
SOFT COSTS
Pre-Departure
Lost productivity of departing employee
(Exiting employee performance at 50%-75%): Hours _____x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of co-workers:Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Increased time discussing departure and organizational conditions Increased work load for employees: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of supervisor: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $_______
During Vacancy
Lost productivity of vacant position Overtime Added shifts: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of supervisor Time spent filling in: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Recruiting administration Supervisor's time with Schedule changes/overtime:
Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Selection and Sign-On
Lost productivity during training Replacement requires Support/direction:
Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Lost productivity of co-workers Existing employees distracted: Hours _____ x Wages $_____= $________
Lost productivity of supervisor: Hours _____ x Wages $_____ = $________
Total “Soft Costs” of Turnover: = $________
TOTAL COST OF TURNING OVER ONE EMPLOYEE
Hard Costs + Soft Costs = $________
FORMULA FOR ANNUAL TURNOVER COST
Number of exiting employees ________ x cost of turnover (hard + soft) $_________ = $________
Conclusion
Today’s leaders must manage the scarce commodity called talent to sustain their competitive edge. The organization with the best talent wins. With a labor shortage expected to hit 10 million workers by 2010, and 43% of our labor force eligible to retire in the next decade, the demand for talent is expected to outweigh supply by 20% through 2015. Talent management remains one of management’s highest priorities. Employee turnover is the silent killer of organizational productivity. Like every business solution, answers come from reliable data and analysis and the desire to develop a strategy and tactics to address the problem. Hopefully you will take the necessary steps to protect your organization in the very real war for scarce talent and future success. The ROI on talent recruitment and retention is real!
Copyright Information:
You MAY reprint the information contained in this article as long as no portion of the contents are modified and it used “exclusively” within your organization. You must also give credit to information by including the tag line...
Roger M. Ingbretsen, Author, Speaker, Leadership Coach, Organizational and career developer For more information, visit www.ingbretsen.com or call 509 999 7008.
Aggressive Recruiting And Retention - To learn more about this author, visit Roger Ingbretsen's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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