We are a mobile society in every sense of the word. This includes a growing flexibility in the workplace as employees make career changes that include exploring new roles and new industries. Those searching may be looking for a new challenge or could be ready to get away from a bad manager or negative workplace environment.
A recent report from LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2020 showed employees stay 41% longer at companies that hire from within. Such a choice not only helps the bottom line for a company, it also improves employee loyalty. Turnover from a lack of internal career opportunities costs close to $49 million each year, as estimated in the report. Since 2015, internal hiring has only increased 10%!
Changes in Hiring and Retaining Talent
- Employee experience
- People analytics
- Internal recruiting
- Multigenerational workforce
*LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2020
Growing Challenge
With more than one-third (39%) of employers concerned about losing their top talent, employee retention remains critical. Employers who desire to retain valuable staff continue to look for new ways to keep top performers in-house. The LinkedIn report states that in order to retain talent, companies will need to do a better job understanding employee needs and wants from an empathetic standpoint.
Investing in Employees
Empathy is the ability to understand or identify with another person’s situation or feelings. In this vein, companies are choosing to shift their focus from shareholder value to an investment in their employees. This includes digging into human behavior, recruiting from within and focusing on the various needs of a multigenerational workforce.
Finding an individualistic approach could be more important than ever considering the wide range of generations in the workplace. Today, employees include representation from the Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and the beginning of Gen Z. Each generation possesses their own wants and desires for a workplace where one would want to stay. In response, companies are updating policies to better appeal to a multigenerational workforce and placing an increased focus on improving the employee experience to increase retention (77%).
Boosting Retention
- Create a positive work environment – employees spend a lot of time at work so make it an environment designed to emphasize communication and collaboration across departments.
- Make communication a priority – no one wants to be the last to know. When in doubt, overcommunicate to employees and make check-ins a priority so you know what is on employee’s minds.
- Generate growth opportunities – explore how improvements in compensation and benefits, training, flexible work schedules and a purposeful mission can make people more willing to happily remain in a workplace.
- Reduce micromanagement – the core of employee retention is having good managers. Leadership must demonstrate appreciation and not be afraid to hire smart employees who desire to challenge the status quo.
Considering only half of employees surveyed report their employee experience as a good one, there remains work to be done. In short, if employees do not find what they are looking for, there’s always another employer who might better fit the bill.
