Reprinted from the January 2011 Business column in Metalforming magazine.
By: Michael Bleau
With the continued economic recovery comes opportunity and challenges for business managers as operations scale to meet new demand. As resumes continue to pile in you may miss the potential for the loss of key human resources. Just as your business picks up and you start offering job openings, other companies are doing so too, which may tempt your employees to leave. Many people have felt stuck; waiting out the recession while they inherit their eliminated peer’s workload all the while their pay rate is either stagnant or reduced. Business leaders need to recognize that the wait is over and that they need to move fast to retain their top talent. The HR gurus at Right Management have released survey results showing that 83% of the gainfully employed will change jobs in 2011. While this could mean that potentially more than half of your workforce could take jobs elsewhere it says a lot more about the current state of morale and dissatisfaction felt by many in the workforce. Holding on to the right people and attracting talent is key to a successful rebound for many companies.
EMPLOYEE SURVEY DETAILS In a December 2010 survey conducted by Right Management (www.right.com), a division of job-placement firm Manpower, found that 84% of workers intend to seek a new position in 2011. A majority of the 1,400 respondents say they plan to look for new jobs, while only 5% say they intend to remain in their current position. This is a sharp increase from an identical survey conducted a year ago, when just 60% of workers expressed an intention to find a new job in the coming year. |
In my opinion, loyalty in today’s employment relationship is undervalued and not often enough reciprocated between business and employee. Building trust, loyalty and security takes thoughtful effort and works both ways in securing stability. But doing it right takes planning. Employment research shows that companies that provide career development opportunities are more than four times less likely to lose talent than organizations that do not. As the economy continues to improve, now is the time to work hard at holding onto your knowledgeable, solid, key performers who continuously bring value to your business. It’s also the perfect time to start securing fresh talent by luring disenfranchised star performers with the prospect of a positive career move.
Getting a plan in place…
· - Identify how your workforce needs will change as you move forward
· - Identify at-risk positions and plan contingencies to cover the loss of key employees
· - Gage employee satisfaction and be mindful of how this can affect retention
· - Identify high-value employees and keep them engaged, growing and performing
· - Tap into your key employees’ networks to capture some new star performers
A good place to start is to identify critical positions where you feel growth or expanded coverage will be required in the coming year—look at all parts of your business. Also, consider where you may be at risk by not being able to quickly bridge the loss of an incumbent in a key position. Next, work with your HR team to build your budget by determining what compensation you intend to offer candidates in order to fill new positions. Check these against industry standards to see how you measure-up against other companies and look outside of your industry to consider other growing businesses within your geographic region.
Once you have completed these exercises, you’re ready to identify and meet with your existing star employees to learn about their career aspirations and how your plans mesh with theirs. It’s possible their goals may fit areas of future demand that you recently identified within the business. This also gives you an opportunity to proactively bump-up their compensation to get competitive or to reinstate pay cuts enacted as belt-tightening survival tactics during the recession. Do so in a planned, open and methodical way with the intention of satisfying the goals of employees in ways that align with your business plans. It’s imperative to have a strategy. Simply engaging in ‘exploratory meetings’ so close to the end of a recession may spawn workplace rumors about job cuts, could lead to negative morale, heightened job stress and fuel the prospect of employee departures; all of which you are trying to avoid. Sometimes overlooked, is tapping high-value employees to leverage their social and business networks to fill open positions.
Your high-value employees have mobility options, more so now than ever, so it’s important to have strategies that keep them engaged, productive and performing. As the new year unfolds build a retention and recruitment strategy to ensure business stability and scalability. Holding onto and bringing on the right people is going to be a defining factor in your ability to take advantage of new business opportunities.
