3 Strategies PROVEN to Increase Your New Employee Retention
Have you ever had the experience of making a new hire and, after just a couple of months, knowing with almost certainty that they’re not going to last?
Maybe they’re slow at learning the job. Perhaps they’re terrible at timekeeping. Or it could be that they’re already butting heads with some of the management team.
You KNOW it’s not going to work out, but you have to give them a chance. You’ve invested a lot of time and money in their recruitment, onboarding, training and salary, so if you have to let them go it’s going to be an expensive decision.
Four months later, the inevitable happens, and the employee jumps before they’re pushed.
The calculations are a subject for another time, but that bad hire just cost your firm, conservatively, over £100K in direct and indirect costs.
This is a long way around saying that there are few more fruitful ways to spend your time than improving your employee retention.
Here are three ways to get it done…
1. Stop using contingency-based recruiters to receive better candidate shortlists
It won’t surprise you that all of these strategies are based on hiring the right person in the first place. If your employee retention isn’t great it’s almost certainly because your hiring approach could use some work.
Start by RETAINING a recruiter, rather than engaging one (or several) recruiters on a CONTINGENCY basis.
** If you’re not familiar with the terminology, “contingency” recruitment means you only pay a recruiter if you hire one of their candidates, whereas “retained” recruitment means you pay a partial fee upfront **
It’s not something recruiters like to talk about, but many who work on a “contingency” basis only fill around 20% of the roles they take on. Not because they’re bad at their job, but because often they’re competing for roles with other recruiters.
The end result is that they literally can’t afford to put more than 20% of their efforts into your assignment.
It’s no one’s fault. It’s just a nasty quirk of the business model.
However, when you hire a recruiter on a retained basis, you’re giving them the financial predictability they need to put more time and effort into the assignment.
The result, typically, is a shortlist featuring stronger, better-matched candidates.
Instead of settling for the best from an average bunch, you can now pick the best from a strong field.
2. Involve the candidates in the process to measure their commitment
Most candidates see their participation in the hiring process limited to sending over a CV, having a chat with the recruiter and attending a job interview.
This allows you to measure skills and experience but tells you very little about their enthusiasm for the role.
This is how you can wind up with a candidate who takes the job for the salary or title bump, but goes back to their old firm after a few months because they miss their former workplace.
If, however, you ask them to jump through a few hoops during the application process, you’ll soon discover who is enthusiastic about landing the role and who has just put their name forward on a whim.
I use a unique recruitment solution called Executive Intelligence that requires candidates to create an introductory video, carry out a behavioural assessment and complete a competency questionnaire.
Not only are the results informative and insightful, but the level of effort the candidate puts into these exercises can be very revealing.
3. Use behavioural surveys BEFORE the interview stage
Most businesses hire on skills and experience but fire on behavioural issues.
So why WOULDN’T you assess your candidate’s behaviour type before offering them a contract?
It amazes me that more employers don’t use behavioural surveys. And that, even when they do, it’s carried out as an afterthought, far too late in the process to be of real benefit.
One smart approach to using this tool is to assess your star performers in the same, or similar, roles, and create a benchmark profile against which future candidates can be measured.
For example, if your best employees are sociable, creative, self-motivated individuals, how long do you think a new hire is going to last if they’re an introvert who prefers to colour inside the lines?
Bad hires are expensive and disruptive and the problem is rarely fixable once the new employee is in place.
This means your best course of action is to review your hiring strategies and get better at hiring the right person in the first place.
To find out how Executive Intelligence can improve your hiring process and, in turn, your employee retention, book a free, no-obligation, consultation here.
Also, find out how costly a bad hire can be with our Bad Hire Calculator.
