Employee Retention Should Be Both a Pre-Hire and Post-Hire Consideration
Having a strong employee retention strategy is crucial to the success of an organization. A focus on retention should start well before an offer is extended and continue throughout an employee’s career. Effective retention strategies begin at the pre-hire stage by understanding what candidates seek in their next role and organization and continue post-hire with recognition programs and personalized development opportunities. By focusing on both stages, companies can build a stable, motivated, and productive workplace.
Fortunately, there are tools and strategies to help achieve these goals, providing crucial information for HR leaders to enhance their approach to hiring. Read on to learn more about empowering future talent during their job search and careers, while also exploring the importance of these efforts and finding practical ways to implement them.
Pre-Hire Retention Strategies
Finding the right candidates who have the soft skills and personality traits to grow and succeed at a company is the first step in building retention. Knowing what these candidates are looking for in their next position and organization is also critical to building a lasting relationship. When businesses focus on these factors, not only can they cut down on time to hire but also quickly center on the right candidates to onboard. They reduce turnover costs and help foster a positive and productive work environment. Read on to learn more about what to focus on pre-hire for tenured employees.
Hire for Soft Skills First
Soft skills are an essential piece of evaluating any candidate and when leveraged correctly, will lead to onboarding an employee that is more likely to be successful long term. While position-specific hard skills, such as knowing how to use a certain software are necessary, testing for soft skills like teamwork and self-awareness ensures your candidates will have the skills to succeed that are harder to train and can adapt as a company grows and evolves. Soft-skills assessments can provide the information hiring managers need to determine who shows the greatest likelihood of thriving in a position or department for years, not months.
Look for What Makes Your Current Employees Stay
Current employees can provide a wealth of knowledge when it comes to retention. Evaluate employees with both short and long tenures to identify themes in what drives them to stay or leave. Once you identify those qualities, look for them in your candidates. Watch out for affinity bias here, you’ll want to look for diverse perspectives, not just copies of your most loyal team members. Using retention forecast can help identify what drives employee retention at your organization and allow you to quickly focus on candidates that display the same attributes without bias.
Improve Hiring Decisions with Data
Leveraging data on candidates’ personalities, skills and overall fit for the organization is vital to building employee retention. Using assessments and other data-driven hiring methods allow companies to evaluate applicants objectively and make informed, data-driven hiring choices. When you pinpoint candidates who meet the necessary qualifications and share the company’s values, you can accurately select individuals who are more likely to succeed in their roles, making the right hiring decision the first time and minimizing the risk of turnover.
Enhance Cultural Fit
Cultural fit plays a crucial role in employee engagement and job satisfaction. When employees feel connected and aligned with the company culture, they are more likely to remain with the organization for the long term. By choosing candidates who resonate with the company’s culture, organizations can build a cohesive and harmonious team, resulting in lower turnover and higher retention rates.
Ensure Job Satisfaction Before Their Start Date
Job satisfaction is critical for employee retention. Satisfied employees are more likely to remain with the organization, thereby reducing turnover rates. Evaluate the candidate’s job interests, work values, and preferences during the interview process to match candidates with roles that align with their strengths and interests from the start. This alignment enhances the likelihood of employees finding fulfillment in their work, leading to higher job satisfaction and, ultimately, better employee retention.
Now that you understand how to build a strong retention foundation during the pre-hire stage, remember that the work doesn’t end once a candidate accepts the offer. To ensure long-term employee satisfaction and loyalty, it’s crucial to implement ongoing efforts and learn what keeps your employees engaged. Explore strategies to keep your employees motivated and committed well beyond their start date.
Post-Hire Retention Strategies
Once you have hired your new employee, the work isn’t over yet. Post-hire retention is crucial to the stability and growth of your organization. High turnover rates are not only financially costly but also detrimental to morale. Losing an employee can cost a company up to twice their annual salary when you consider recruitment, training, and productivity losses. Everyone loves to feel valued and appreciated, and employees who feel that way are more likely to be productive, innovative, and loyal to their company. When an organization focuses on its retention strategy, it tends to attract and retain top talent, creating a strong cycle of growth and success.
Take a look at some initiatives you can implement to ensure you have a strong post-hire retention strategy:
Understand Your Employee’s Needs
The key to building a strong retention strategy is understanding what motivates your employees. Gather regular feedback and offer surveys to gain insights into their preferences, interests, and concerns. This will allow you to tailor your initiatives to their specific needs and improve their overall job satisfaction.
Provide a Comprehensive Onboarding Program
A well-built onboarding program is essential for building a strong foundation for employee retention. Welcome your new employees by introducing them to company culture, values, and expectations. Walk them through the company tools and resources to get them comfortable from day one. How new hires are welcomed into the company can significantly impact their overall attitude and directly influence their retention.
Offer an Employee Recognition Program
Recognizing and rewarding your employees is a powerful tool to boost morale and show prospective employees that your company is dedicated to their success. Implement a system that allows you to recognize individual employees and team accomplishments. Whether through monetary rewards, experiential rewards, public acknowledgment, or points added to their account, employees will appreciate being part of an organization that values hard work. When employees feel appreciated, they are more likely to remain loyal to the company.
Regularly Monitor Retention Metrics
It’s crucial for a company to keep track of its metrics to identify areas for improvement. If you notice a high turnover rate or low employee engagement, it might be time to look at your retention metrics and reevaluate your strategy. If there is a pattern in when people are leaving or if a certain team has high attrition, it could indicate a need for reassessment. Focus on continuously evaluating and revamping your strategies to ensure long-term success in attracting and retaining top talent.
Provide Personalized Development
Offering upskilling opportunities to all employees will easily help with employee retention. Start by understanding the needs of each role, the professional goals of each employee, and their current soft and hard skills. Then develop a workforce development plan that is convenient, accessible, and inclusive to all employees. This will significantly improve your ability to nurture and retain key talent, cutting down on turnover.
Build a Plan for Lateral Moves
Upskilling and development also pave the way for employees to move within the company, whether it be to a new position on the same team or a different department. This helps retain exceptional talent even if a promotion isn’t currently available by providing a chance to expand experience within the organization. Keeping an internal talent database is an easy way to manage current employees’ talents and motivations and know when and where a new opportunity may be available for them.
Create Clear Paths to Promotions
If employees get the sense they need to leave a company to be promoted, retention may take a hit. HR needs to effectively communicate that not only are internal promotions available, but how to achieve them. Mentoring, coaching and involving current managers are all part of the process to build mobility within an organization. Keeping top talent should always be a priority, not to mention the overall benefit of retaining the institutional knowledge of their current employees over losing them to a competitor.
Strong retention is about more than just keeping positions filled. It’s about creating a positive and motivating work environment where employees consistently feel valued and appreciated. High turnover rates can result in increased recruitment costs, lower productivity, and diminished morale. By investing time in developing both pre-hire and post-hire retention strategies, you ensure that new hires are effectively integrated into a stable, engaged team. This approach not only reduces turnover but also fosters a supportive workplace culture that drives growth and success for the entire organization.
For pre-hire help including assessments, reach out to Cangrade for a demo. If you are looking to implement some of the post-hiring strategies mentioned above, Rewardian can provide a customizable employee recognition and rewards platform to keep employees engaged and motivated to perform their best.