With the high costs of recruitment and on-boarding, employee retention is becoming a critical strategy for employers across the globe since the cost of hiring even one employee can be substantial. Business Advisor, William G. Bliss lists various costs associated with the recruitment function: job board posting, recruitment agency fees, assessment batteries, and background checks. These real costs are in addition to the opportunity costs for internal recruiters to post job ads, review resumes and interview viable candidates.
While not every employee will cost the company the same amount, even a new hire earning $8.00 per hour can cost your firm about $3500 in recruitment-related expenses, both real and indirect.
Recent surveys have found that about one in three employees will be searching for new employment over the coming year. Aside from the above-noted costs associated with this recidivism, the greatest threat to these firms is that the most talented employees may accept positions with key competitors thus causing a brain drain.
While salary and benefits do play a role in employee resignations, studies have found that employees actually resign for a number of reasons having nothing to do with monetary considerations. Such reasons include lack of career or professional development opportunities, misfit with company culture, or non-supportive management.
While a certain amount of employee is inevitable, with only minimal effort companies can make a huge impact on reducing its frequency.
An effective retention strategy should incorporate candidate-centered job descriptions. Most job descriptions include information on qualifications and responsibilities but fail to capture the unique culture of each work group (vertical) within the company. We call these work group traits hidden motivators. Why hidden? Because traditional job postings focus on skills, qualifications, education and experience but don’t speak to the preferred work styles or unique culture that resonate more deeply with candidates and offer them a glimpse into what makes this opportunity unique as compared with the same job in other companies. Two accountants at two different companies may perform the exact same tasks but it is the values and work style that each work group fosters that will determine if that accountant will fit-in and derive self-fulfillment from the job.
Every employer is the employer of choice for "right fit" candidates and they are best identified by highlighting the hidden motivators that will attract talent to your organization to the exclusion of others.
Uncovering hidden motivators is a simple process of speaking with team members to obtain their perspective on workplace values and culture. This is best performed by an outside party who can be objective since employees may be somewhat hesitant in revealing any negative opinions to internal human resource staff.
Below is a schematic of the process and benefits of utilizing candidate-centered job descriptions:
Identification of work group culture-->
Identification of Hidden Motivators-->
Creation of Unique Recruitment Proposition (URP) -->
Highly targeted candidate response-->
Self-actualized workforce-->
Lower recruitment and on-boarding costs.
As this shows, the best time to create a retention strategy is before you even begin to recruit!
To be sure, job postings do need to include some information regarding knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs). The value add of creating candidate-centered job descriptions is that these messages foster an "aha" moment because the content resonates with them on a deeper level that was hidden or not captured with traditional postings.
Candidate-centered job postings will result in some candidates passing up the opportunity--which is what you want! Why? Because creating a unique recruitment proposition (URP) will lead some applicants who may possess the requisite KSAs but would be a poor fit with the culture to self-eliminate. Think of the costs saved by dodging that bullet so early in the process!
Lisa Ann Burke is Principal/Owner of Blue Key Consulting. She can be reached at bluekeyconsulting@gmail.com
