Update your Employee Practices…or else!

Companies everywhere have been struggling to hire, train, and retain talent in their workplaces. I have customers who have consistently been at over 50 openings over the course of the past year. Even facing a potential recession, workplaces will often still have many positions due to resignations and retiring employees. Attracting talent, recruiting them, and hiring them is one of the hardest parts of Human Resources and Talent Management.

The easiest way to attract talent (and ultimately retain them) is to have a workplace employee experience that is already truly attractive.

What constitutes ‘attractive’ in the workplace employee experience?

I want to share my husband’s recent experience interviewing for, receiving an offer from, and ultimately turning down a job with a company. What is interesting about his experience is the reason why he ultimately decided not to take the job. The reason might surprise you.

• The reason was not compensation or benefits – the job offered an exceptionally lucrative compensation package with great benefits including employee ownership.
• The reason was not the job responsibilities – the job was a good fit for my husbands’ skills and appeared to be a good opportunity for him to successfully apply those capabilities.
• The reason was not reputation – the company appeared to have a good reputation with its customers and quality products to sell to them.

What then was the basis of his decision?

At first, he couldn’t quite define or explain his reservations. As a former VP of TM/HR, I was quite curious as to what was holding him back or what was causing him hesitancy given the above information he’d already shared. Those are generally the reasons people give for why they accept or decline a job offer. With a bit of coaxing, he began to share the things that were bothering him:

• Handbook with a tone of ‘the company always comes first.’
• Antiquated policies regarding travel, time off, and parental leave.
• Carbon copy forms and tests.
• The lack of diversity of the people he met within the company (all white men).
• A physical c-suite wing of the building.
• No multi-factor authentication (indicating a lack of cybersecurity awareness).
• On-premises e-mail systems (rather than cloud-based).
• A lack of opportunities for growth and development.

In summary, he saw signs of an outdated business or workplace culture and that raised a ton of red flags. These flags were sufficient to give him pause in considering what otherwise would have been a lucrative offer. He spent 15 years at the last company he worked for, and he’s looking for a role where he can spend at least that long at the next. A workplace with outdated practices meant he’d likely not be able to stay there long because either the company would fail, or he would become frustrated at the lack of progress and culture.

Why would this matter to potential employees?

If the workplace/business culture or environment isn’t progressive, it’s almost guaranteed to fail in the modern-day business world. Mark Cuban recently shared in an interview he anticipates more change to happen in the next ten years than he has experienced in his entire career thus far! This rapidly changing environment requires workplaces that are prepared and adaptable. Candidates will pick up on these examples and it will indicate a lack of awareness regarding the importance of culture, technology, and employee engagement.

When workplaces or businesses have not yet embraced technology and employee engagement practices, they will have issues filling positions (and retaining employees) moving forward. Candidates will notice and they are likely to include these factors in their decision-making process. Especially candidates who have come from a workplace with strong technology and employee-focused practices. Most likely, these are some of the highest performing and most productive candidates they will have apply. Don’t lose good candidates by not taking the time to update your practices to meet modern-day expectations.

What can you do to avoid losing good candidates?

As I mentioned earlier, the easiest way to attract talent (and ultimately retain them) is to have a workplace employee experience that is already truly attractive. Ten years ago, building this type of organization and the programs necessary was difficult; there weren’t good models, programs were just being developed, and exceptional workplaces were hard to find. The good news, if you find yourself in this situation today there are tons of resources available to help you modernize your workplace in the ways that truly matter to people – both in attracting them, retaining them, and in supporting high performance and productivity.  

The latest research in neuroscience is expanding the potential ways of increasing performance and productivity exponentially. We have much better data and research to support the practices that matter most to both people and the business results you want to achieve. New technology, such as HRV monitoring and voice recognition Emotional Intelligence assessments, provide additional objective measures to further enhance employee performance and well-being. In fact, by creating an engaging employee experience, you are guaranteed to see greater business results. Gallup has measured and documented the benefits for decades showing the significant advantage businesses with high employee engagement have over their competitors.

By creating an engaging employee experience, you are guaranteed to see greater business results.

Source: Gallup

Why wait any longer to make the changes you need to make?

It took me ten years to develop the programs and practices that created an exceptional workplace. Most workplaces don’t have that kind of time today to build their own programs and practices (as much as they would like to). The good news is that you can have the best of both worlds. By partnering with an employee experience company, like Evolving to Exceptional, you can get proven practices and successful programs to implement within months or even days. These practices and programs can be easily customized to meet your needs and equip your people with the skills to deploy and sustain them successfully.

Don’t let the next year go by without taking a step to modernize your workplace. Whether you have 5 employees or 500 employees, you need to be creating an exceptional employee experience right now! I guarantee hiring outside support can help to speed up your progress and make a huge difference in the future of your workplace and business. Reach out today if your workplace needs a modernized employee experience!  

For more information, visit: Evolving to Exceptional Workplace Solutions