Our Guide To Retaining Talent

Posted by Niche Recruitment
7th July 2022

It’s no surprise that here at Niche, our biggest focus is recruiting new talent to your teams. However, we’re all about introducing talent that is going to be right for the long-term and not just the right-now! With the competitive job market, retaining talent is more imperative than ever before. We have put together some handy tips that we are picking up from what is really important to employees.

There could be a host of reasons for an individual to leave their job, but if you notice what should be an occasional event is becoming a regular occurrence, it’s time to look deeper.

Here are some checkpoints to go over if your team is consistently losing top talent:

Money Money Money

It’s not always about money, but during The War on Talent and cost of living crisis, salary becomes an important topic. Especially when findings show its easier for workers to get a pay increase by joining a new role right now rather than asking for pay bumps. We’re not suggesting blindly adding thousands onto paycheques, but it’s important to look at the wider picture of where and how your employees are living. Does their pay fit into industry standards? You might not be considering this, but your employees certainly will be. If you aren’t willing or able to keep up with pay standards, you employees may end up being forced to find positions that do. At the very least, be more tempted by the head-hunters filling their LinkedIn inboxes… If you feel a little lost, we provide a benchmarking service with our experts in the field, so if you don’t have the time to do you research, let us do it for you!

Balancing the work-life scales

Remote working is more wide scale than ever, with hybrid working becoming the norm for most of us in office roles. This shift in the way we work is due to Covid, when those of us not working in essential services worked from home during lockdown. There has been a recent ripple in the market of some employers demanding their workers attending the office full time, here at Niche, we’ve seen the direct impact of this: people abandoning ship. We highly suggest looking at your working from home policy if you’re struggling to keep placements filled. We also offer a free interactive report for anyone struggling to motivate remote and hybrid teams at the button below.

Request our Insight Report

Compare and Contrast

We mentioned looking at industry standards for pay, but what else about your direct competitors? All companies have their limits, but recently the majority of people have been disillusioned with shiny shallow benefits like fruit bowls and casual dress Fridays. Workers have never been more motivated by a good work life balance, opportunities for development, and the lure of working for a company that matches their talents and values. Don’t feel like you have to offer bells and whistles, meaningful and valued benefits are simpler and more affective, and if your close competitors are offering this, you’re likely to see your team flocking towards them.

Don’t switch it up

As recruiters, something we’ve seen first-hand is a wave of workers leaving their roles when goalposts are changed. For example, if you hire a placement with a hybrid working model, hiding job responsibilities until they’ve started and suddenly demanding full-time office attendance will do nothing but create an environment of high turn around. This causes new placements to feel cheated, making you an untrustworthy employer in their eyes and practically packages them back onto the job market. Never use smoke and winners to land a quick placement, use Niche to make a permanent one!

Employee Value – Are you training staff and offering development?

The skills gap is wider than ever, and staff feel the impact just as much as employees. Investing in your staff’s development, especially if this can tie in with plans for them to grow in your team, is a fantastic way to keep staff happy, successful, and retained! There are thousands of options at employer’s disposal to provide to your team. Making a Learning & Development placement in your team can be a fantastic way to approach this, get in contact with Nick and check out the service page for a quick run down on how and what we offer.

Stagnant Talent Pools

Do your employees make progress in your company? Are they able to climb the ladder? When staff members feel stuck in the mud and can see the rest of their team members haven’t seen career progression either, they will look outward rather than inward. Seeing co-workers valued and promoted acts as motivation and installs confidence in your employees that progression in the team is realistic and achievable. This reduces the chance of employees returning to the job boards and leaving a hole in your team.

Forcing Square Pegs Into Round Holes

Staff culture is a more nuanced topic. You may have even become blind to the kind of staff cultures that have been created in your teams, especially if you work in a larger business with more facets of staff. As recruiters we understand the importance of culture fit when recruiting, and its equally important while looking at your retaining measures. Could your team use a culture refresh with more inclusivity, different staff benefits, a wider focus on culture training, or a deep dive into team culture? If you have talented employees leaving the business because they feel excluded, or even worse discriminated against, this is a massive issue for your business and needs instant attention.

Listen to the Whispers

With a world of watching eyes at your employee’s fingertips, social listening is incredibly important for Employer Branding. Its also a useful tool to get truthful, albeit potentially scathing, insight into what’s making your team’s turnaround so active. Make sure you have your finger on the pulse of the tools available to you, what’s your Glass Door score? Your Trustpilot? Your Google reviews? Can anything be gleamed from these avenues? You could be turning a blind eye to a platter of direct problems that can easily be targeted and therefore, addressed. We also suggest pushing yourself to participate in awarding bodies, rewards, and recognition. Set yourself a business goal of making it onto one of the best of the bunch lists of these awarding bodies and you’ll completely revamp your retention in the process.

If you’re struggling to keep people in your team, it’s best to not have tunnel vision. Be open to listening to your staff about how the issue can be improved. An open line of communication is an incredibly valuable thing for employees. The days of staying at one company for decades has been side stepped by younger generations for a multitude of reasons. It might be less common to keep a new hire for the amount of time that your company has seen in the past, but you can make it more likely by making sure the above points are addressed.

Get in touch if you need more guidance on retaining top talent, or if you need some new additions to give your team a refresh!