Last week I talked about the need for having “ball players” or superstars in your organization. What if you don’t have any ball players? What if you have some, how can you stop them from leaving to work at your competition? This week I am going to share with you three differentiators that will help you in recruiting talent and retaining superstars in your organization. Spoiler alert… it’s not money!

Recruiting Talent

Identifying and retaining talent these days is difficult. In today’s work force highly skilled individuals are in high demand, and can often pick and choose where they want to work. When recruiting top talent, you don’t always have to be the highest bidder (i.e. pay the most) although you do have to be competitive. Today’s employees are looking for more than a paycheck, they are looking at what the company offers above and beyond the pay. College level athletics recruit talent all the time, and are unable to use pay as a differentiator. Let’s look at some of the strategies used by top athletic programs for recruiting and how that applies to your business.

Be a Winner

Everyone likes to win. I know we tell our kids things like; it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, just do your best. But honestly, if you do your best and play fair it still hurts to lose. Right?

When colleges are recruiting athletes, they will boast their winning records. If they cannot boast about a winning record, they’ll talk about a history and a plan to start winning. We’ve hired new coaches, we recruited new players etc. When talented athletes have a choice of where to go to school, they will want to play for a winning team.

The same is true when recruiting talent to your company. They will want to see you have a winning organization, or at least the potential to be a winning organization. Boast about the growth you’ve seen recently, new large contracts or expansion. Let potential employees know about any awards you may have received, and company history. These things will send a message to your prospects that when they come work for you they will be joining a winning team.

Culture

Everyone wants to fit in. We are tribal by nature, and we want to be surrounded by people with the same values and motivations. Have ever worked at a company, or joined an organization, where you just didn’t fit in? How hard was it to make friends? Did you feel comfortable? Even if you did, did you really enjoy yourself? Probably not.

Again, it isn’t uncommon for college recruiters to have prospects visit for a day or more. Typically, they’ll shadow someone from the team and see what it’s like to be part of the program. The idea here is to get the prospect a “feel” for what it’s like to be part of the team. The coach, and the player will want to know if they will fit in, if they can be part of the culture or if they’ll be an outsider. Those that fit in can thrive, outsiders tend to hold back.

The same is true in your work place. Although it’s not typical for a company to invite a prospect to shadow another employee during a job interview, but there are other ways that prospects can learn about culture. When you bring in a prospect for an interview, how are they received? Websites like indeed.com or glassdoor.com often have employee reviews so candidates can get an idea what it’s like to work at your company. What do prospects see when they look you up online?

Development

Prospective athletes understand that they are investing time to play at the college level, and in return want to know that they will become better during that process. In college sports, this is an easy discussion. Coaches can talk about the number of players that went on to play professional sports. If that isn’t an option, they will talk about graduation rates, and successes that former athletes have had in professional careers.

Your prospective employees will have similar questions:

If I work for you, what will the future look like for me?
Do I have career advancement opportunities, or will I be stuck doing the same thing for my entire career?

Top performers didn’t get to be top performers by accepting the status quo. Top performers achieved success by learning, developing and growing. Having a proven employee development system will help you attract and retain high performers and high potential employees.

This Week’s Challenge

I know there are still some employees that will go to the company that pays the most. Most of the time it’s best to let them work somewhere else. Eventually someone else will offer them more money and they’ll leave. Save yourself the headache and cost of losing talent. Create an environment that attracts and retains talent. Develop a strategy for:

Competing and winning at a high level
A welcoming and inclusive culture
A proven effective employee development system

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Business Impacts of Low Unemployment

The realities of low unemployment on a business can be a struggle. To stay in business, you have to continue to increase demand for your products or services. However, you may struggle with maintaining the proper staffing. Hiring is a challenge, because talented people already have a job. Productivity is another issue, because you must do more with less, or at least more with the same. So, you either invest in hiring someone and covering another salary, or your people are working overtime. Either way, employee costs are increasing. Let’s look at each of these troubles individually.

Recruiting

I am hearing ads on the radio saying that hiring companies must target individuals that already have jobs. The reality is the talent you need to drive your business forward is already working. If your recruiting, you probably need to woo talent from your competition. Well, this means your competitors are probably actively recruiting YOUR employees! Now your recruiting problem is compounded by a retention problem.

Do you have a strategy in place that focuses on employee attraction and retention? Why would your employees want to work for you if their competitor is offering them similar benefits but maybe more pay?

Productivity

The sad truth is you are probably looking at ways to do more with less. I can’t count how many times, when I was a project manager, I was asked if we could take on another project with the same amount of people. I really had no way of knowing. I’d do some analysis of how many hours my team was working each week, and forecasted the future workload to determine if I could do it. But I didn’t really have a way analyzing how to improve productivity and efficiency.

Obviously, employee retention impacts productivity. Losing an employee impacts the work that person was doing, but now others are required to “pick up the slack” until a replacement is found and trained. In the mean time people are not as effective as they could be with their primary responsibilities. Losing employees has a ripple effect on the team and organization through lost productivity, decrease in morale, and eventually profits.

Higher Labor Costs

Supply and demand dictates that when supply is less than demand that prices will increase. Talented, highly skilled people are in high demand, and the supply isn’t sufficient. There are some industries where this gap is even getting wider. So as your company grows, and you do have to hire, the cost of that talent is increasing. Salaries are going up! Your recruiting costs are increasing. Salaries are increasing, just so you don’t lose your top talent. Resulting in the cost of your services or products to increase.

As your costs increase, do you pass along the cost to your customers? Reduce profit?

This Week’s Challenge

This week, to address the business impacts of low employment economy, I recommend focusing on developing a strong employee retention strategy. Focus on employee development and engagement. When you create a company that develops and engages employees you will see improvements in productivity (do more with less), you’ll have a higher probability of retention, and will build a reputation as THE EMPLOYER OF CHOICE attracting desired candidates to your company. If your pay, benefits and culture is “competitive” in the market, how can you expect to dominate? Let them compete while you dominate!

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

recruiting