“This is an environment of welcoming, and you should just get the hell out of here.” – Steve Carell, The Office
“Hiring, retaining employees continues to be top challenge,” headlines a recent Crain’s Cleveland article. It’s an in-depth look about today’s tight job market, which favors the sellers — or job candidates. This is what’s keeping HR and hiring managers up at night.
Prompted by a LinkedIn-posted question of what firms can do to improve the “hire and retain” decisions, I’ve put together this list of ideas. They’re anchored in what I witnessed during my 20 years as a Corporate America manager, and also driven by what my clients, college students and readers of this column have revealed over the past decade. Mostly, this list is tailored for the challenges firms face today.
1. Publish Better Job Descriptions – Most job descriptions are too long, too verbose and too repetitive. Reading one can feel like walking a corn maze. There’s a way to write these key documents succinctly, with clear and specific details that align with department and company goals, without revealing trade secrets. This step alone will weed out the wrong candidates and reduce wasting everyone’s time, before there’s a single hire.
2. Recruit From Both Genders and ALL Generations – I keep reading trade articles about the shortage of marketing talent. I promise you there’s no shortage. The pool is very much out there and it’s mostly untapped: women over 40. I can’t tell you how many have opened their own agencies because they don’t fit the youth culture and the cheap salaries companies are offering. These former CMOs are taking their expertise and their clients with them.
3. Give Employees the Tools & Training to Succeed – Yes, there’s a risk that they will take the training you paid for to another org. But the bigger risk is having an entire culture and internal system that is too antiquated to compete in the marketplace. Evolve and retain, or die.
4. Pay Market Rate – Present the right offer up front. Don’t nickel and dime people. Don’t make them promises about how they can “make as much money as they are motivated to make.” Neither the jaded Gen Xers nor the seasoned Millennials or incoming Gen Z are that naive. Hire with transparency. The Internet tells all.
5. Encourage Your Employees to Be Problem Solvers – So many companies hire people for their talent, skills and ideas, only to beat all that out of them in order to conform to the “this is how we do it” philosophy. These corporate and nonprofit dinosaurs are simply expediting their point of extinction. And their yes-man toxic culture guarantees that the idea people will quickly move onto to more progressive environments and relevant brands.
6. Align the Right Talent to the Right Project – One of the best bosses I ever had not only leaned on the talent she recruited for our perspectives and experience, but she also would mobilize her troops so that no one employee would be working late nights at the office while another had a clearer calendar. Most smart employees rise up to new challenges, even outside their areas of expertise. Many will thrive.
7. Promote on Accomplishments, Not on Nepotism – Just because someone has been in a role for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean they are any good at it. There are employees out there who are masters of being under the radar or showboating by frequently dropping smart-sounding phrases like, “We must be more strategic.” Instead of getting hypnotized in their salesmanship, reward those employees who’ve actually delivered on company goals.
8. Signal Super Clear Decision Rights, Performance Measures and Rewards – I give full credit to my business school on this one. It cemented the “three-legged stool” into our ripe minds and reminded us that unless that perfect pyramid exists at an organization and is clearly communicated to managers and employees, the result will be chaos. Step one is aligning the job description and annual review and assigning specific, measurable goals to each employee. Flowery language and pages full of semantics give each side the same confidence as nailing jello to a wall.
9. Prioritize Succession Planning – Without a legacy plan, the organization’s goals and vision may quickly get diluted, especially in times of economic cycles and leadership loss. Groom your people as though your stock depends on it. And never book all your executives on the same flight.
10. Celebrate Your Successes and Share the Wealth – I once worked for a company where after a particularly good year, one day the CEO drove into his reserved parking spot in a brand new Porsche. The rest of us? Nothing. The next CEO would break bread with employees at every level. Guess for which leader we worked harder? And which one of those two CEOs actually knew what was going on behind the manager gate?
Today’s four working generations have more options than ever for their employment choices. Give them a reason to choose you.
Office Space image: IMDb.com
Alexsandra (Alex) Sukhoy. I’m a writer, marketer and career coach at Creative Cadence LLC, and teach business students at CSU. You can find my first business book, Date Your Career: The Longest Relationship of Your Life, on Amazon. I’m currently writing a film noir screenplay called Cleveland City.
If you have career related questions that you’d like to see addressed in this column, PM me on twitter: @creativecadence