RECRUITMENT – the act of finding new people to join your organisation. Sounds simple, right? But, it’s often the subject that keeps you at awake at night or frustrates you to the core, due to the time and cost often associated with it.
Alexandra Garner, Director of Human Resources at Haines Watts’ consultancy, HW Human Resources, looks at the ways in which business owners can improve their recruitment process.
“It’s worth looking at the evolution of the recruiter over the past few decades to understand why and how we need to reconsider our recipe for successful recruitment. To lock down the right candidate 30 years ago, recruitment methods involved scrolling through a pile of index cards, talking to your network of contacts and trawling the papers for clues as to who was the best talent. Influencing people to make a change relied on relationships, reputation and trust. Skip forward to today and the index cards have been replaced with smart phones, your trusted network is now a virtual one and the expectation to influence is at warp speed. This is our reality now. It’s not inferior to 30 years ago, it’s just different.
But does it work? More than 52 per cent of companies are now failing to fill their graduate vacancies according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters, due to the reneging on offers. This is partly due to the breadth of choice available for candidates, coupled with a lack of engagement from the point of offer. In a self-service world where review sites are commonplace, the popularity (or not!) of an employer is freely displayed for the world to see. The period between offer and start date also allows competitors to seduce your new employees.
All sounding a bit bleak so far? It’s not. What it does do, is allow us to refocus the mind and to work on the opportunity these factors present. Reputation remains a stronghold and its importance is timeless. Engagement has equal importance but to dispel any jargon, engagement is not a new concept. It is simply the steps we take to continue building the relationship and reinforcing the reason your employee joined. This is the biggest opportunity for small businesses, where budgets are lean and time spent on laying the foundations for future recruitment must hold an intrinsic return. It is a continuous process that must commence before an employee starts to ensure a return on your investment.
So, for 2017, these are our five top tips to help you build employer reputation and engagement:
1. Set up a company page on Glassdoor www.glassdoor.co.uk and invite employees to provide feedback. Do not influence this
2. Respond to the feedback and use it to improve your employer reputation, publish updates
3. In the period leading up to the start date, ring your new employee regularly to catch up and use the time to agree activity for the first week, month and beyond
4. Prior to starting, invite to a team event – lunch or team meeting
5. Set a Personal Development Plan (PDP). This provides a sense of direction, ensures greater resilience and provides you with business benefits as well as strengthening the relationship with your employee.
These tips don’t require any physical cash outlay, they will provide a strong return on your investment and, importantly, they are simple, relationship-focused and multi-generational. Get this right and you’ll see a significant increase in your retention rates.
Contact Alexandra Garner at HW Human Resources, 1 Rushmills, Northampton on 01604 746760
email or visit the website www.hwhr.co.uk
