Hiring talent is a huge challenge in the tech sector right now. Many hiring managers are having to adjust strategies and approaches to talent acquisition in order to fill roles but going into 2022 employers need to prioritise taking care and nurturing their team members too. Many employers are guilty of thinking that employees should be grateful for the opportunity to work for them; particularly those established enterprises which rely on name and reputation in the fight for talent. However, after the biggest cultural shift in our lifetime, this isn’t enough.
If you’re in the middle of a hiring surge, you cannot forget your existing team although it’s easy to get caught up in the hiring process. Dedicating all of your time and efforts to finding new talent, may leave your existing people feeling superfluous and neglected; they won’t seem like your priority. Your team may begin to feel overlooked if your entire people strategy involves recruitment and not considering their wants and needs.
With so many open vacancies and opportunities available, candidates and employees now holding more power than ever before. Moving jobs comes with less of a risk as there are so many options available; therefore, if your employees don’t like how they’re being treated at work, they’ll be more open to new opportunities. Of course, people leave jobs naturally when they’ve outgrown their role or life situations have an impact but, in a post-pandemic world when priorities have shifted so much, there are many other reasons that they could leave. To prevent this attrition, employers need to revisit their people strategy to prioritise those who are already working on their team.
Your people are not expendable, and it’s time employers showed their teams this. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to replace a talented person. From advertising a job to the onboarding process, there is a huge process involved in finding and training the right person, it can take months which can cause issues for a scaling business. Attrition and turnover can cause many issues for businesses looking to grow. Firstly, it can put scaling on hold while you find someone to take over another role; you can’t prioritise new hires in the business if critical roles remain open. Secondly, it can also damage your employer brand reputation and hinder recruitment strategies; candidates will soon get wind that employees aren’t happy and that you have a high turnover rate. Therefore to avoid high attrition rates and going into 2022, employers need to refine their people strategy to ensure that they’re putting people first.
Taking care of your employees isn’t only the right thing to do from a moral standpoint but it can have huge advantages in the current talent market, including:
Avoid high turnover rates
The obvious advantage of creating a people focused workplace is that you’ll avoid high turnover rates. When you’re trying to grow your tech business and expand your workforce, an existing team member leaving can really throw a spanner in the works. You’ll need to adjust your recruitment strategy to fill their role and then take the time to onboard and train a new employee when you should be growing your business. Turnover can be a hinderance to growth and if it can be avoided, it should be.
But how do you avoid high attrition?
To make employees feel valued, you need to listen to them and provide a supportive company culture. Take into consideration their likes and dislikes about your workplace but also their ambitions and goals; support their career progression and give them support they need both personally and professionally. Through conversations and research methods you can understand internal employer brand perceptions and tailor your EVP to deal with these issues. Scaling businesses are in a unique position to be more agile and adaptable than corporate counterparts. So, if you can help to make employees’ lives easier by providing a more flexible working culture you should.
Internal candidates can fix your recruitment solutions
With the tech recruitment landscape so competitive, internal candidates could be the key to fixing skills gaps and recruitment challenges. Looking internally and talent mapping within your organisation to see if you have suitable candidates and skills could help to give you a competitive advantage as it will save job advertising and recruitment marketing costs. Even in a scaling business, you will have people determined to grow and progress. More often than not, it’s easier to recruit for junior roles than more senior positions, so recruiting and promoting from within makes logical sense. Plus, it can enhance your employer brand if employees and candidates can see progression opportunities within your business; they’ll want to stay with you for the long term and you’ll attract more determined and career focussed candidates in the future.
However, you must be careful when looking at internal candidates. Say they don’t quite match up to the standard of an external candidate when it comes to experience and skills and are unsuccessful. Then you need to let them down gently or risk them leaving you for new opportunities. With an external candidate if they’re unsuccessful, unless they join your talent pool you do not need to communicate with them again. Internal candidates however, still work for you and you still need the skills and responsibilities they have for your business to function. Show them that despite being unsuccessful they are valued and work with them to develop skills and experience so that they can progress at a later date.
Employees are valuing wellbeing at work
For many of us, the pandemic has been a wake-up call. It’s made us appreciate just how precious and short life is, which has brought wellbeing and selfcare to the forefront of our minds, including the role that our workplace plays in our happiness and sense of wellbeing.Employees want to feel supported and taken care of, more than ever we crave a culture of kindness and empathy at work. If your business doesn’t provide this, employees will be more than willing to look for an employer that values their wellbeing. Gone are the days of working long hours or elitist workplace culture, employees are learning their worth and will not stand for a job which causes them stress or unhappiness, especially with so many current opportunities out there for them. Employers that don’t embrace this will find themselves losing talent regularly and will face recruitment issues as their employer brand becomes less and less desirable. From compassionate leadership to their relationships at work, what employees value within the workplace has changed and happiness is becoming a priority.
Your employer brand has more influence than ever
When it comes to recruitment today, so many companies are competing for the same talent, which means that employers need to pull out all of the stops to differentiate themselves. If your competitors can match your salary and benefit offering then you need to find ways to form an emotional connection with candidates in order to attract them. Emotional connections come with telling employee stories and promoting your employer brand through values and mission. Therefore, if your employees aren’t happy and are telling the wrong sort of stories, it’s going to work against your talent acquisition efforts. Websites like Glassdoor and social media platforms are leaving employers with nowhere to hide when it comes to treatment of employees and guess what? These are the first place candidates will look when applying for a job with you. Your employees past and present have a lot of influence over employer brand perceptions. Therefore, to ensure candidates don’t receive a negative impression of your business before they even apply, the most simple solution is to ensure your current workforce are happy and respect you as an employer. This means talking to them and working with them to ensure your company can be both productive and an enjoyable place to work.
Talent Works are a flexible RPO provider which specialises in tech recruitment. In order to focus on existing teams many scaling businesses are considering outsourcing the recruitment process. Engaging in a partnership with an RPO provider allows leadership teams to prioritise pleasing their people and ensuring needs are met.
If you’d like to talk about how our RPO provider can help your business, contact us.
To learn more about the state of tech hiring in the UK or the US, click the relevant link to download our tailored reports.
