Economic uncertainty creates unforeseen shifts in budgets and staffing for businesses of all sizes. It can also lead your best employees to search for opportunities and pay increases at other organizations. However, it is possible to prevent attrition and hire efficiently in leaner times.
Here are five ways to hire top performers and retain your best talent.
Five ways to hire top performers and retain talent
1. Recognize and appreciate top employees
One of the most well-known, but best strategies, for retaining new and veteran employees is to recognize their contributions and show appreciation.
Displays of appreciation and recognition have a strong impact on employee morale and retention. According to an analysis by Gallup, employees who do not feel recognized are twice as likely to quit in the next 365 days.
Take the time to recognize and appreciate your employees. It is a low-cost endeavor with high returns—and it can be as simple as:
- Saying thank you regularly, whether it’s in person, over email, or on a Teams/Slack channel (simple, we know!)
- Offering a wellness program
- Providing a learning stipend to employees to pursue on- or off-the-job education
- Sending care packages
- Giving the team a day off
- Celebrating employee milestones
A simple act of gratitude and kindness builds company culture and will help retain new and experienced employees within your organization.
2. Prioritize learning and development
Continuous learning and development are surefire ways to keep employees engaged in their roles. It also improves the team and the organization as a whole. Failure to provide new learning and development opportunities is one of the main catalysts of employee departures, according to McKinsey.
Enable your employees to grow by:
- Encouraging self-development and upskilling by offering training courses and creating mentorship programs
- Creating scheduled time for learning and development
- Allowing them to attend work conferences related to their expertise
- Providing job mobility within your organization (lateral moves, role changes, and promotions)
3. Leverage HR technology
Finding and hiring the strongest candidates is a resource-heavy task. But hiring technology can simplify and streamline your recruiting process by leveraging data to help you find the best talent and decrease the time to hire. This way you prevent attrition by avoiding rehiring for the same role several months later.
One of the best ways to increase hiring efficiency is to integrate pre-hire assessments into your hiring process. They give you an advantage over competitors who are sourcing from the same talent pool by:
- Helping you pick the right candidate every time by predicting candidate success and retention
- Avoiding rehiring by hiring the right fit the first time
- Spending less time screening for roles by automatically narrowing your talent pools
- Adding hiring automation to speed up your internal process
4. Automate a positive candidate experience
A less-than-favorable candidate experience can lead to a lost candidate and negative brand impressions. Here are a couple of ways automation can help you deliver a stand-out experience for your candidates.
- Automate application updates: Applicants often feel left in the dark about where they stand in the hiring process. Overcome this hurdle by using the automation in your applicant tracking system (ATS) to send updates to candidates about the status of their applications. This ensures the candidate isn’t left in limbo and your team spends less time sorting and updating internal applications.
- Automate candidate feedback: Another common complaint from candidates is the lack of post-application feedback. Combat this by providing automated feedback after the applicant takes their pre-hire assessment. Cangrade’s assessment instantly delivers a report to applicants with their top strengths, areas to develop, and career motivations.
Your candidates will have actionable career insights and be impressed, regardless of whether they’re hired.
5. Consider lateral moves
Lateral moves can be a win-win for employees, teams, and organizations. They help improve job fit and help fill positions that are difficult to hire for.
Giving your employees the opportunity to join another team by way of a lateral move offers various benefits:
- It’s a new opportunity for the employee to demonstrate their skills, learn new ones, and grow in their career
- The team fills a void without hiring outside the organization
- The team member brings organizational knowledge
- The employee may see more success and happiness in their role
- The organization fills tough-to-hire positions
During lean times, hiring outside of the organization can be costly. Giving an employee a lateral promotion can satisfy the needs of all parties involved without having to tap into additional resources.
