Employee attraction and retention is a major part of any successful business. If you don’t succeed in both areas, there are going to be difficulties with creating a positive work environment. Employee attraction and retention will enable you to manage your company reputation as an employer and improve your employee friendliness and trustworthiness overall.
So, what is the attraction and retention of employees? Attraction of employees is essentially attracting the correct number of suitable, talented individuals to apply for a job vacancy that you advertise. Retention of employees is the businesses capability to prevent employee turnover, or the number of people who leave their job in a certain period, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
Read on to find out further what attraction and retention of employees means, and the benefits it has to an organisation.
Employee attraction is about finding the right kind of people that fit into your company ethos, your culture and future business goals. Selecting candidates at the early stages of hiring is just as important as the final decision. This way, you can recognise the attributes of each individual candidate. Look out for things like relevant qualifications, skills personal to them, their personality and nature. You need to understand what motivated the individual to want to invest themselves into your company.
Retention is the continuous motivation and improvement of employee satisfaction to keep your valued employees within your organisation, and reduce turnover. If employees are satisfied with their job, hopefully this is because they feel recognised for their hard work and are rewarded for such. Therefore, their loyalty to the company increases.
At Centric HR, we offer services that help improve your employee attraction and retention such as supporting with panel interviews and selection days, developing onboarding and exit surveys so that organisations really understand why employees are attracted to your organisation, why they stay, how quickly they settle and more importantly, why they leave your organisation.
You can find out more about our attraction and retention service here.
Ultimately, employee attraction has a direct link to employee retention. Making sure you attract well suited candidates contributes to how long an employee stays in a company. If you attract the wrong type of candidates, their time at the company won’t be long lived as their core values may not always match with yours. So, employee attraction and retention can save an organisation from productivity losses.
High-retention workplaces tend to attract more engaged workers who, in turn, get more work done. Engaged employees are more likely to improve customer relationships and internal relationships with colleagues.
In conclusion, boosted productivity and high levels of engagement ultimately increases your businesses revenue.
You can improve employee attraction in a number of ways, all which have the same aim of attracting the most suited candidates to your organisations job adverts. At Centric HR, we suggest;
Being accommodating to your employees should help them to feel valued and appreciated in your organisation. Each employee should be looked at as an individual person with their own needs. This ensures that the day-to-day activities do not end up being robotic and of the same day in, day out. Most importantly, it helps to create a work culture that is inviting to future candidates.
Internal opportunities are a huge positive, such as on-the-job training. This allows for your employees to grow their skills internally, instead of moving on.
A detailed and well explained job description can make you stand out as a company that values your potential employees talent. Additionally, exciting job descriptions work well as acquiring like minded individuals who are driven by the same tasks. Candidates prefer clarity in the job responsibilities, afterall, it is where they will be spending a lot of their week doing. So, salary, company culture, and any other benefits you may offer will be a good way to improve your employee attraction.
No company can flourish without a strong employer brand. So in order to invite the correct candidates to your job advert, you need to find those that match with your values. This is where the importance of employer branding comes into your improvement of employee attraction.
Before applying, potential employees tend to look for reputable companies that share the same mission or values as theirs. For this, increasing your brand visibility is vital. Your company’s social media platforms are an easy way to do this. Sharing company updates on your LinkedIn for example, will allow the candidate to get an inside look into your company culture.
If you have ever asked the question; ‘Why are employees leaving?’ You may need to improve your employee retention strategy. Some things which could be contributing to employees leaving may be because of:
So, how do you make the improvements so these factors become non-existent in your business? Putting an employee retention strategy in place is ideal for improvement.
For your strategy, we recommend a few of the following: Setting clear expectations for the employees’ work tasks and their future at the company. You can also help them build relationships with their coworkers and colleagues so they feel welcome in the organisation and relationship building will also improve teamwork productivity. You could also provide opportunities for them later down the line which helps them progress and learn new skills, as people often move to new opportunities because they want a new challenge. We also recommend allowing all employees to offer feedback on their job such as the company processes, company culture and what they would view as fulfilment in their job.
Treating each employee as an individual with their own personal goals will allow employees to feel that they add value and they make a clear contribution to the company.
At Centric HR, we understand the importance of employee attraction and retention, which is why we can implement tailored strategies into your business to increase employee performance. To find out more about how attraction and retention can benefit your business, please contact us here today.
