Will Gaines is the Vice President of Human Resources at Super Store Industries.
getty
Examine the job market right now, and it’s clear that employees have options—and they’re acting on those options.
Many employees have exit plans for their current roles, and they likely won’t face uphill battles to secure new positions. According to a January 2023 ZipRecruiter survey, 50.3% of respondents “heard back from their current employer within 3 days of applying for their job,” and 89.6% reported they heard back “within about a week.” Yet, as ZipRecruiter noted, in the past employers typically responded to applicants to arrange an interview "about 1-3 weeks" after receiving an application.
With workers on the move, it’s understandable that many organizations focus more on driving recruitment than retention. Leaders are finding themselves playing catchup to fill suddenly empty positions. And in this catchup mode of operation, their priority becomes attracting and hiring the best talent. While it’s essential to focus on recruitment, it’s also vital for leaders to drive retention so they can reduce voluntary turnover. When employees stay longer, companies save time, money and resources, among other benefits, including increased productivity, higher revenue and the ability to deliver better customer experiences.
The key to driving retention? Putting aside self-defeating beliefs that become self-fulfilling prophecies (such as believing that employees will always leave for more money or that high turnover is par for the course in a particular industry) and crafting intentional employee experiences. At the core, a company’s employee experience strategy should be rooted in answering the following question: “How can we position ourselves to engage and connect with our employees on a deeper level?”
Many factors go into the employee experience. Research from BetterUp found that the six tenets of employee experience are authenticity; engagement; optimism; purpose and meaning; social connection and belonging. A holistic, strategic approach to crafting an intentional employee experience should address these six areas, going above and beyond the occasional catered meal or company outing. The employee experience has to be lived by everyone in an organization. It has to be an ongoing conversation that’s ingrained in the company’s culture, not just a quarterly announcement or event from the HR department.
By taking four concrete steps, HR leaders can create intentional experiences that help workers derive meaning and purpose from their work, helping them nurture a connection to the organization—the backbone of retention.
1. Create Employee Journey Maps
There are fundamental touchpoints in the employee lifecycle. HR leaders must closely collaborate with leaders throughout the organization to pinpoint and visualize those touchpoints by creating employee journey maps. This close level of collaboration will lead to greater organizational buy-in of these employee journey maps; when other stakeholders understand their value, they’ll be more likely to use them.
Those touchpoints can include initial contact between a company and an employee, recruitment, preboarding, onboarding, the first week, the first three months, etc.—to the day of separation. With employee journey maps, HR teams can outline what the employee experience should look like at each stage, along with the finer details, such as which departments they’ll need to collaborate with, how they’ll engage employees, signs that employees are actively engaging, and so forth.
In short, employee journey maps provide an engagement roadmap for HR teams, helping them build standardized experiences that minimize the chances of employees slipping through the cracks and becoming unengaged. But HR leaders should keep in mind that individual employees’ journeys might vary and that sometimes, tailored approaches will be necessary.
2. Emphasize The Four Cs During Onboarding
HR leaders should pay close attention to the onboarding stage as they create employee journey maps. Of course, employees start forming first impressions of organizations from the moment they encounter a job posting. By the time they’re hired and getting onboarded, the tone is well established. Employees already have an idea of what the company is like and what it stands for. But the onboarding phase solidifies their expectations of what their working relationship with the company will look like.
HR leaders should emphasize the four Cs—communication, clarity, connection and culture—during the onboarding stage. HR leaders must clearly communicate to employees the vital information that will make or break their ability to succeed at the organization (such as job expectations and standard company practices), all while giving them a strong sense of the company’s culture and building a foundation of connection between the new hires and existing team members. HR leaders must also ensure that other stakeholders at the company have the necessary training and resources to properly manage and interact with new hires.
Granted, no onboarding experience is foolproof. There is still the chance that a new hire will leave. But a strategic approach to onboarding will maximize the chances of an employee staying long-term.
3. Foster Quality Working Relationships Between Employees And Their Managers
An oft-repeated saying is that people leave bosses, not jobs. In fact, in a survey by GoodHire, “82% of American workers said they would potentially quit their job because of a bad manager.”
To enhance retention, HR leaders should help employees and their managers create strong working relationships anchored by clear expectations, goal-setting, meaningful feedback, mentorship and recognition. HR teams should orchestrate these relationships by taking various steps, such as sending anonymous feedback surveys, providing leadership training and coaching to managers and leaders, providing ongoing leadership support to managers and leaders and having regular check-ins with all employees to uncover and address concerns.
As collaborative partners to the business, a key step HR leaders should take is suggesting that managers hold regular one-on-ones with their employees—and encouraging managers and their direct reports to collaborate in setting their own one-on-one cadences.
4. Provide Meaningful Opportunities For Career Growth And Development
Many employees consider career growth and development an essential part of work and would leave if they feel like there aren’t any progression opportunities.
The concept of career progression should not start and end with an annual training session. It needs to be ingrained into an organization’s culture. HR leaders should have open, ongoing dialogues with employees to find out where they see themselves in the future and help them achieve those career goals. As they engage in these conversations and form these bonds, they should recognize that employees’ needs, wants and desires might evolve over time.
HR leaders should keep the career lattice and career ladder methods in mind and provide both types of career advancement opportunities. Some employees might want to switch fields altogether, whereas others might want to progress to the top of their current field.
Additionally, truly supporting employees’ career progression means accepting that they might leave the company to pursue their dreams and goals. Although this seems counterintuitive to boosting retention, HR leaders should see the opportunity in it: these former employees can become an organization’s biggest advocates, referring the very candidates who just might end up taking the company into its next chapter.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
