How to attract and retain the right talent
BY Evelyn Jackson (CEO and Creative Director)
What is the right talent?
This is the first question to answer before you seek to develop a strategy to attract and retain them. And it is not one strategy fits all. And thereby lies the second challenge.
Following on from the great resignation, there is a surge in people and culture teams to develop great Employee Value Propositions to attract and retain talent into their organisations. Stakes are high with the cost of losing talent evident in lost capability and efficiencies, not to mention the added costs of recruitment and market salaries.
And a great EVP starts and ends with understanding your current talent, what they expect from you and then equally understanding your ‘potential talent’ – individuals inside and outside your organisation that you know will bring the skills, values and motivators to make a difference.
“It is all about ‘meaning’ - for each and every one of them.”
Ask anyone in your organisation if they value differences in people and most likely the answer is ‘yes’. Creating a work environment that values these differences is what underlies equal opportunity, flexibility, and anti-discrimination at work, and is underpinned by the acknowledgment that if given the opportunity, everyone can contribute to the wider team.
With this in mind, valuing people’s differences at work is important if you want to get the most out of your workforce. And making the effort to discover what makes them different and the work experience to bring out their best work, a must do.
“2020-2022 has brought about significant change across all generations. Those who work are now seeking ‘enriched lives’.”
I once said my purpose was to change the relationship people had with work. What I did not realise was that this would happen so soon. Today, rarely are workers living to work, and most are moving to a life where they not only work to live. They just live.
Making everything in their life, including the time at work, worth doing. Attracting and retaining the right talent, is about understanding your talent and then designing a business for the future focused on meaningful work, meaningful leadership and meaningful workplaces.
1. Meaningful work
Individuals need to know the work they are doing has meaning. Not only the role they perform and how that links to the company’s purpose overall, but the link to their personal purpose. Supporting individuals understand their personal purpose is a way an organisation can support meaningful work and in turn attract and retain the right talent.
2. Meaningful leadership
When forming teams and their leaders, think about leadership with intention. Who are the people in your organisation that have the leadership qualities you need and care enough about others and the impact they have on people? Meaningful leadership starts with personal relationships filled with authenticity.
Attracting and retaining the right talent today is about giving back to those you have the privilege and responsibility of leading.
3. Meaningful workplaces
Designing your workplace for meaning is about reviewing the type of business you want to be, the purpose of your business and what and who you believe necessary to get you there. Every good workplace starts with clarity on WHY they exist, WHAT they do and HOW they do it.
BUT meaningful workplaces to attract and retain the right talent require the policies and practices to match this clarity AND the diversity of individual needs.
There is not enough said about understanding people. Discovering who is the right talent for your organisation and team requires a deep understanding of the individual needs and motivators that apply.
User experience is not just about customers - think of your workplace as the experience and your talent as your users. That alone will get you halfway to developing an Employee Value Proposition and communicating it in the most effective way so that you can attract and retain the right talent.
Written by: Evelyn Jackson, CEO, Corporate Crayon, Mentor at Find My Meaning, Employee Energy Expert, Mum and life partner in training.
Get in touch with us today to discover your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)