Talent Retention in a Tight Job Market: Building Your Company Brand

With the current US nationwide unemployment rate at 4.7% employers are scrambling to recognize high performers and retain talent.  While it is important to have a compensation program that is progressive, benefit plans that are aligned with the employee needs and a work environment that is supportive, companies are finding out that that is often not enough.  In an economy where attracting and retaining talent is a key challenge facing organizations a coordinated and thoughtful strategy needs to be implemented in order to ensure success.  Companies today should be asking their leaders and HR professionals what steps can be taken to be strategically positioned to leverage their brand and internal talent to support lower turnover and improve productivity.

 

Consider these three key components that support a quality company brand that encourages excellence:

 

Building a Strategic Plan

 

In order to develop an effective brand, there needs to be a strategic plan based upon the values of the organization.  Executives need to understand that a brand is not only the pay, benefits and work environment but it is also the core values that are the underpinnings of the company culture.   It is important for the leadership team to examine the brand and determine what the company wants to be known for and then reinforce this perception to improve the company’s strategic position.   Ultimately as HR professionals you want to capitalize on what makes your brand unique, and build from there.  It is important to take a critical look at your current brand and define what you want to be known for when a potential employee thinks of your company.  An important component of this part of the process is - what is the ideal perception you want to convey in the market-place. 

 

Implement Your Plan Base Upon Your Values

 

Once you’ve developed your strategic brand, how you choose to implement that strategy is  very important. In fact, just because you want your company to be perceived in a particular manner, doesn’t mean that it will be perceived that way.  The best brands are often the ones that live up to or exceed their reputation and are able to develop a brand strategy that is constructed of four pillars of success:  honesty, integrity, quality and trust.  Trust is the most important factor to ensure that your brand strategy remains aligned and intact.  Trusting a company’s product or service will have a long-term effect and improve future prospects.  If your  company is viewed as an honest, responsible and  a trustworthy organization potential candidates may select your company over another employer because the brand will provide a better career experience for them.

 

Sharing the Brand

 

Perhaps the most important way to communicate your brand strategy to potential candidates is to have your current employees champion the benefits of working for the company.  Encourage current employees to share their experiences and showcase how your brand and company is separated from the competition.  You will discover that there will be those engaged employees with a desire to highlight the company  culture and spearhead ideas that can help bring to life your employer brand. By empowering these individuals, you’ve created an advocacy program that has far reaching effects both internally and externally.

 

Ultimately building a strong brand strategy takes time and a serious commitment to understanding what your company represents and the talent it wishes to attract. By taking the time to examine the issue, a company can develop a brand that no longer struggles to attract and retain talent, but draws in those that are aligned both strategically and culturally with the company.

 

New Year – New Goals what Needs to Happen in 2018?

As the budget process for many companies draws to a close, HR professionals have to prioritized their initiatives for 2018 and assign budget dollars to ensure that their initiatives occur.  Three important HR initiatives are  critical in order to meet the needs of the organization and the employees over the next twelve months.

Compensation Planning

With unemployment currently at 4.1% in the United States many Americans are enjoying the benefits of working in a rewarding position.  However, a limited pool of qualified talent increases competition both in the private and public sectors.  This in turn challenges those HR professionals that are in a compensation planning and design role.  Retaining talent will be a increasing challenge over the next year and without the compensation team evaluating the salary ranges to ensure that benchmark positions are at market, higher turnover maybe the result.  While some organizations view compensation planning as an annual event handled through the merit increase program most progressive companies view the management of direct pay, commission, bonus and incentive programs as an on-going process in order to support the company.  The addition of either a compensation professional or the outsourcing of this type of service is critical for organizations to maintain a competitive pay structure.  Ensuring that the merit increase budget supports an aggressive pay plan along with additional dollars to reward performance is a key responsibility for the Human Resources department.

Professional Development

General employee satisfaction is often determined by how and what employees are learning on the job either through “on the job” training or coordinated professional development activities.   Typically, satisfied employees are more successful in meeting the goals of the company if they are being challenged and are learning new tasks.  Not only is some training mandated by law but HR professionals need to budget for more targeted training in order to support the development needs of the staff.  HR professionals will need to determine what training is needed at their company through a needs analysis.  This process will ensure that employees are provided with the necessary skills and sufficiently trained in order to be productive.  When budgets are tight training will often be the first line item to be eliminated which sends the wrong message to the staff and is often not in the best interest in the company.

HR Infrastructure Upgrades

Continually improving the technology and the company’s infrastructure will often times improve morale, tend to produce greater financial results and will send the message that the leaders of the company are investing in the future of the company.  An annual audit of key indicators to determine where technology and infrastructure improvements are needed will help the leaders of the organization set priorities and allocate financial resources in order to improve the business.  This audit will also set forth a road map for the employees and the leaders to communicate the expectations and goals for the future.  The planning for and the budgeting of these key improvements will assist in holding key leaders accountable and assist the employees in understanding what the long-term goals of the organization are.

Human Resource professionals must prioritized their initiatives and allocate a reasonable budget to ensure that three key initiatives are in place for 2018.  These include an aggressive compensation program to retain talent, on-going professional development to challenge the staff and improved skills and HR infrastructure upgrades to monitor technology improvements and where appropriate allocate the budget for capital improvement.  HR professionals need to prioritize and promote these three key process improvements and if done properly a budget will include these initiatives for 2018.

 

Is the Annual Performance Review Still Relevant?

With all of the changes over the past several years and the shift of the Human Resource profession from a tactical to a strategic focus, one of the questions we hear from our client’s is the annual performance review relevant in today’s business environment?  Businesses today are driven by metrics and the HR programs that have been in place for many years need to be evaluated to determine if they are effective.

Given the survey data we believe that the annual performance review is a valuable tool to motivate and ensure high levels of performance.  To support this position we examined our survey data in order to determine what our clients and respondents are saying about this key management responsibility.

 

What is a Performance Review and How Do We Define this Process?

 

The performance review is a mechanism to document an employee’s skill level based upon a clear understanding of the duties and responsibilities of the job and the results expected.  Performance reviews have been viewed as an effective tool for management to help motivate and maximize performance and productivity.  It is also a way to outline career goals and identify expectations for the future.  The performance review if consistently applied across the organization can facilitate a ranking mechanism for management which helps identify high-potential employees as well as provide succession planning services for key positions in the company.

 

Do Employees find Value in the Process?

 

Based upon our employee survey data areas of employee satisfaction with management are varied; however, employees find the management responsibility of conducting the annual performance review very important for ensuring high levels of performance along with the maintenance of superior employee-management relations.  Holding all employees accountable creates a team environment where honest and constructive feedback is valued.  Employees; however, do not view the annual performance review as an isolated event but rather a continuous process.

 

Do Managers find Value in the Process?

 

Our survey data suggests that the need for managers to motivate employees through a progressive performance review process facilitates a stronger organization which allows the employee to grow professionally.  The opportunity to present a strategy for continuous improvement and tie pay to performance along with recognizing excellence on the job creates an environment that is more innovative and creative.  If done properly, managers believe that the annual performance review can retain high performers and lower turnover.  Furthermore, if performance, pay and incentive plans are linked the performance review process will have more significance and importance.

 

What is the Problem with the Annual Performance Review?

 

With managers and employees finding value in the process why are there so many issues with this key Human Resources program?  Managers will often wait to deliver bad news to the employee during the annual performance review rather than addressing any challenges immediately.  This approach creates the environment where the employee can’t alter their behavior or make changes until it brought to their attention and by then it is too late.  Employees will often not want to appear lacking in their performance and when challenges surface they are reluctant to bring any impediments to their success out of fear on not being viewed as knowledgeable.  Both parties want a successful process only the communication process is lacking and not cascading through the organization.

 

What is the Role of HR to make this Process Work?

 

HR’s role is to create an environment where all employees are treated fairly and their manager is viewed as a strong coach and mentor.   Human Resources is also a facilitator for change and thorough a performance management training program this very important management task can remain relevant and a key metric for managing overall talent.  HR professionals will need to devote more time and attention in the future to providing leaders of the organization with the training on how to deliver an honest assessment of their direct reports performance in a timely manner. 

 

What are the Benefits of Promoting from Within your Company?

Today with business facing strong headwinds from both domestic and foreign competition retaining quality staff that have a proven track record is more important today than it has ever been. With unemployment near 10% and a flood of applicants trying to secure employment, Human Resources should re-examine their internal application process.

 

HR departments should internally post all open position for a minimum of 10 business days, establish a process for employees to apply for an open position and companies should encourage all qualified internal candidates to apply. If there is a skill deficiency consider looking at providing the internal candidate with additional training or support as you have a proven quality employee. Always get back to all of the candidates by letting them know of the hiring manager’s decision. Often times hiring an internal candidate will be an employer’s best decision as you have access to the candidates performance reviews, typically there is no drug testing, background checks or concern about performance.

 

Consider establishing a career opportunities program for your company. Promoting from within is often times the best business decision a company can make.

Is Turnover Going to Be a Problem in 2011?

As the economy improves and employees start to see new opportunities to increase pay and responsibility employers will start to see an increase in turnover.

 

Turnover is very expensive to businesses as there is the cost of sourcing candidates, time to interview and check references and then the training of the new hire to meet the daily tasks. 

 

One of the best ways to meet this challenge head-on is to ask your employees what their long-term goals are, do they need any additional training to be more productive on the job and what are some of the key challenges that they face. Often times it is just the discussion that makes the employee feel better about their manager and company. So ask your employees to share their thoughts and learn from their ideas.

 

Communication is very important and two-way communication is critical to retaining employees. As a reminder, if you lose an employee you will often have to pick-up their job in addition to your own so learn to listen and communicate more effectively.