How to Attract Job Seekers with Creative Hiring, Compensation and Employment Practices
The War for Talent is on once again. Unemployment rates are lower than they have been in many years, making hiring—and retaining--your top talent more and more difficult. If you haven’t been proactively managing your employment strategies, now is time to take a closer look at how an ‘employee’s market’ may impact your bottom line and keep you from your projected sales growth.
Turning a Tight Labor Market into Brand Building
It all starts with your employment brand. Take a tour of employee feedback sites like glassdoor.com. What are they saying about your company? Is your organization perceived as an employer of choice? Is there a clear brand that potential employees think of when they think of your company?
Work with your Marketing staff at your company or your outside creative partners to build consistent and compelling messaging that makes you an employer of choice. Create a strategy to ‘manage’ any bad PR that may exist and influence potential new hires. Lastly, embark on promotion of your employer of choice messaging through awards, blog posts, employee testimonials, etc. so that job seekers get a balanced perspective of your company.
Compensation Is More than Carrot Dangling
Along with clearly communicating your employer brand and value proposition, now is the time to embark on robust compensation planning. You need a current set of salary ranges for all job titles in your organization which simultaneously capture competitive market value and appropriate internal comparisons of all of your jobs. And, of course, as we have all heard, culture still eats strategy for breakfast. Having a culture that values clear communication, eliciting from people the things they think leadership doesn’t want to hear, and celebrating individual and group contributions and achievements are some of the foundational marks of a strong organization culture.
One of the best sources of referrals for new hires remains your current employees. If they are happy in their jobs and with their employer, they are the best advertisement for working at your company. Creating a referral bonus for new hires referred by current employees is a very timely initiative in this tight labor market. A well-rounded approach to compensation that also enlists your internal ambassadors can be the best carrot you have for attracting—and keeping—new talent.
Refine, Re-tool, Re-do Your Compensation Strategy
Need help assessing your compensation planning to find ways to attract new workers while motivating and retaining current employees? By starting with a competitive compensation analysis, you can pre-emptively improve your employee retention rates while building your reputation as an employer of choice. Contact me to start your compensation assessment and strategic planning.