According to Gartner, 51% of global employees are now watching for or actively looking for a new job. Their objective is clear: they want higher salaries, access to more development opportunities, and above all, improved well-being at work. These expectations are key measures for attracting and retaining top talent!
When you consider that an employee’s departure can cost a company between 6 and 9 months’ salary, the math is clear. Long-term, it’s better to invest in talent retention than to spend time replacing departing employees. In the age of quiet quitting, however, keeping employees engaged is no easy task. 77% of employees worldwide are disengaged at work, and only 50% find meaning from their job.
To continue attracting, engaging, and retaining talent, human resources departments have no choice but to continually readjust their HR strategy. Which topics, then, should be prioritized? And how can you ensure that your strategy meets the expectations of both candidates and employees? Below are a few tips to help you do just that! 👇
Why invest in talent attraction and retention?
“To attract and retain talent, you don’t need to be a strategist. Just offer an attractive package, and it’s in the bag.” While this statement may have been true some fifteen years ago, today it’s far from it! This is demonstrated by a FlexJob study, which states that 63% of candidates prefer to benefit from a better work-life balance rather than a better salary.
Clearly, salary isn’t everything! Several other criteria come into play when choosing between staying on board or jumping ship:
- Well-being at work, including work-life balance
- Job security (as well as any room for potential promotions)
- Interest in missions and the meaning given to work
- Level of responsibility, autonomy, and trust granted
- Work atmosphere and relations with colleagues
- Flexible working conditions (for example, the possibility of teleworking)
- Organizational culture and management styles
- Development opportunities
- Commitments to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)
Let’s look at how to attract and retain talent using these different levers. 😉
What’s the best strategy for attracting talent?
Offer competitive packages
Even if salary and benefits aren’t everything, they shouldn’t be neglected! According to a study by Glassdoor, remuneration remains the number one criterion when choosing a new job. If you want to attract the best talent, you’ll need to offer an attractive package.
This package can be specified directly on the job listing and specify:
- The fixed salary range for the position. The more competitive it is, the more likely you are to attract top talent. Careful, though: you want to maintain a certain degree of consistency with salaries on the market and within the company.
- Any variable pay (things like bonuses, profit-sharing, incentives, and stock options)
- Your remote work policy
- Benefits, for example:
- health insurance options (including premiums, deductibles, copays)
- paid maternity or paternity leave
- contribution to childcare costs
- matching contributions to a 401k or other retirement savings plan
- paid vacation and sick leave
- free access to sporting and/or cultural activities
- business telephone, company car, etc.
Bolster your employer brand
To attract talent, you also need to make yourself visible to candidates. This is where employer branding comes into play: the term refers to the brand image projected by the company, both internally and externally. When well thought-out, this showcase can help increase the number of applications you receive.
To enhance your attractiveness, we recommend highlighting your corporate culture and values, as well as your commitments to issues such as the environment, diversity, and inclusion. This can be integrated into the description of your job offers, on your career site, on job boards, or even on your social networks!
Also read: 10 Ways To Enhance Your Diversity Recruiting Strategy
If you have the resources, don’t hesitate to offer a variety of formats, including videos, carousels, quizzes and so on. This will help you stand out from the crowd and leave a lasting impression on potential candidates.
Create an efficient recruitment and integration process
Recruitment and integration are also key levers for attracting talent. However, it has to be said that the practices in place are not always up to scratch.
Almost 50% of candidates have had a bad experience during a recruitment process. The reason? A lack – or even absence – of communication, but also a response time that was too long. In the digital age, many candidates don’t hesitate to share this bad experience online (on sites like Glassdoor). This can discourage many candidates from applying for your vacancies…
To create a positive candidate experience, it’s important to set up an effective recruitment and integration process. This includes:
- The creation of clear, detailed job offers that correspond to the needs expressed internally.
- An automated recruitment process using ATS (applicant tracking software), which enables all applications to be processed quickly and ensures that no-one is left without a response.
- Interviews with the right people who ask the right questions—not too many, and not too few. It’s best to have a maximum of 3 interviews per job (and not double that number!)
- A comprehensive onboarding program to help employees understand their role within the company, get to know their colleagues better, and develop the skills they need to successfully complete their assignments.
What’s the best strategy for retaining talent?
Invest in professional development
Of course, training doesn’t end with onboarding. It continues throughout the employee’s development within the company. It’s often said that an employee who’s stopped learning is one who’s on the way out. And with good reason.
According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 63% of American employees who quit during the Great Resignation did so because of a lack of career development. Investing in professional development is therefore a good way of attracting and retaining talent!
Depending on the resources you have available in-house, you can offer your employees the opportunity to take part in training courses run by internal or external stakeholders. These can be e-learning formats that employees can follow at their own pace, or real-time training courses that allow them to ask questions and interact with others.
To encourage ongoing training, you can also create rituals. At Talkspirit, we organize a weekly “Growth Academy,” where sales, marketing, and customer support teams share best practices and feedback. The theme changes with each session, allowing different employees to have their say. For example, we’ve covered topics such as social selling, customer onboarding, and the use of artificial intelligence.
Improve transparency to develop autonomy
On average, employees spend 20% of their working time looking for information! The reason: the multiplication of our applications and sources of information, which tends to scatter our data in multiple places. This can lead to information overload, lower productivity, and even higher turnover!
To continue attracting and retaining talent, everyone needs to have access to the same level of information. Regardless of hierarchical level. The more transparent you can make this, the easier it will be for your employees to find the information they need, and the more autonomous they’ll be able to work! Ultimately, that boosts employee engagement and improves talent retention.
Two key tools can help you develop this transparency:
- Talkspirit: the ideal platform for centralizing all the information and knowledge you share internally. A Swiss Army knife that boasts its own news feed organized by theme group, a customizable home portal, a drive, and a content library.
- Holaspirit: this self-management solution helps you map out your organization’s roles and processes, providing greater clarity on who does what. Thanks to this increased transparency, teams can gain in autonomy, agility, and performance!
Bring recognition
Last but not least: recognition. According to a study by Blueboard, two out of three American employees feel they don’t receive enough recognition at work. And yet, this is one of the main drivers of talent retention.
Creating a culture of recognition at work can have many beneficial effects for your employees. For example, it can help to give meaning to their work, increase their motivation and performance, and thus build loyalty.
Here are some ideas for developing recognition:
- Highlight your teams’ successful projects on your enterprise social network‘s home portal and/or news feed.
- Create a prize to reward the best employee of the month (and really reward them!)
- Set up a discussion group where everyone can congratulate, thank, or reward employees or teams for their efforts.
- Explain to employees individually how their work contributes to the company’s overall performance.
- Give bonuses and/or gifts to the most committed and best-performing employees
A final word
To attract and retain talent, it’s important to act on several levers at once. The biggest areas are employer branding, recruitment, integration, training, compensation, recognition, and transparency. By taking all these issues into account, you can create a comprehensive HR strategy that will support your company’s growth.
Of course, there are plenty of other levers and best practices for improving talent retention. Discover them in this white paper below: 👇
