Of all the post-pandemic challenges facing businesses right now, the ability to attract and retain talent is most definitely one which organisations will be looking to place a focus upon. "The great resignation" is currently serving as a weather vane of the mood of employees and is a strong indicator of just how fundamentally people’s attitudes and priorities may have shifted over the course of the past couple of years.
Attracting the right talent for your business will play a vital role in ensuring a strong post-pandemic recovery. As organisations look towards their future business planning, it will be crucial that they are getting the right people in place to drive success, as well as making sure that they are aware of how employee priorities may have shifted over the past year and what steps they can take in order to make sure they retain their most skilled people.
At Advanced, we believe that your HR teams can be a positive and influential driving force in helping you transform your brand and making your organisation a more appealing prospect for potential new job candidates. We also believe that the systems and technology leveraged by your HR team currently, has a huge role to play in supporting your desire for growth and more effective talent acquisition.
Why attracting the right talent is so important.
In order to be able to fully realise their business strategies moving forward, organisations will be looking for workers that are the right cultural fit and will ultimately add value to the business over a span of time. What determines the best talent for an organisation goes far beyond just skillsets and businesses will need to ensure that the people they are bringing on board will fit seamlessly into the existing culture of their workplace. The process of talent acquisition allows businesses to have the focus needed to hone their talent search.
By honing the process of searching for talent, businesses allow themselves a greater degree of freedom in being upfront about their requirements. Retaining new talent can hinge on the recruitment stage with research suggesting that nearly 40% of new hires leave their jobs within the first six months and 20% of new hire turnover occurs within the first 45 days. This is because of poor onboarding and a lack of transparency about the culture they were entering into. As a result, new hires begin to regret accepting the offer over another and their energy is put into looking for a new job rather than excelling at the current one
What role does HR have to play in attracting talent?
As with various aspects of the HR function, crafting and utilising an effective programme of talent acquisition can be unwieldy- bringing with it, as with so many things, a morass of admin heavy responsibilities. As fruitful as placing a focus on the growth and development of your people can be for an organisation, it won’t be worth much at all if it means burdening your HR teams with tons of manual input, distracting them from their main responsibilities.
The answer would appear to lie within the systems and technology being harnessed by organisations. In order to development a truly effective long term programme of talent acquisition and development, organisations should lean on their HR systems in order to support them and take the strain of the process.
One of the main purposes of an effective HR system is to automate and streamline the entire recruitment cycle. An effective talent management programme is simply an extension of the hiring process, therefore there is no reason your systems can’t be leveraged in the same way to offer support and continuity for your employees beyond the initial point of hire.
So what are the key areas your HR system can help you with when it comes to the question of talent acquisition andmanagement?
1.) Forecasting- At a basic level, employee training and development can ever only be truly effective if the people you are bringing into your organisation are fit for the role in the first place. An effective HR module allows you the opportunity to introduce an element of forecasting to the recruitment process, automating and filtering applicants by specific metrics, providing skills testing exercises and other functions, ensuring you are only bringing the most suitable candidates through to an interview stage.
2.) Interviewing- In order to take the pain out of the hiring process, organisations should understand that patience is a virtue. As much as it may be a relief to get key positions filled, the long term consequences of bringing onboard the wrong candidate are far more wide reaching and ultimately, will see you lose out more in the long run with the cost of a bad hire having been found to equate to roughly 30% of a new employee's overall first year earnings. You HR systems can help you craft preset questions in order to help prevent bias influencing the interview process. Also, any technical-led roles can be supported via automated skill assessments or tasks for candidates to complete, ensuring that you can hone your search around people with the relevant skill-sets.
3.) Onboarding- The onboarding process is a critical stage for both employee and employer alike and mishandling this step can very well determine the long term viability of a person within your organisation. Your HR systems should work in lockstep with your people teams, automating parts of the onboarding process such as scheduling introductory meetings, requisitioning office and providing them with any and all training material needed to help them hit the ground running in their new role.
4.) Compensation and rewards schemes- Many organisations offer varied and complex employee rewards schemes and keeping on top of any incentives can be an extremely challenging area of the HR function. This is another area ripe for automation, with an effective HR module allowing you the ability to instantly flag employees who qualify for bonuses or other rewards by whatever metrics determined by your organisation. Your systems can also allow you to effectively track and chart more belt and braces employee benefits functions such as company travel packages.
5.) Ongoing education and development- Demonstrating your commitment to fostering the ongoing growth and development of your people is a brilliant way of helping to create a motivated and engaged workforce. The challenge of keeping on track of various developmental programmes is easier said than done however and represents a significant burden for HR teams. Your HR systems should be your first port of call to eliminate the need for masses of manual input, effectively logging and charting an employee’s developmental journey. The ability to instantly flag certification which is up for renewal is also an admin heavy aspect of employee training which can be eased via automation.
6.) Your EVP- Research by Forbes suggests an increasing trend for younger workers to seek out brands who are actively engaged in social causes. For businesses who are looking to appeal to younger talent, they would do well to consider how they are able to demonstrate their commitment to certain values or causes such as environmental issues or matters around diversity and inclusion. The ESG, or Enviromental social and corporate governance serves as an ideal measure of these metrics, comprising as it does, the collective social consciousness of an organisation. By folding the gathering and communication of data around your ESG into your wider HR function, you can more effectively communicate your commitment to these causes to potential new hires.
What’s next?
At Advanced, we understand that driving forward success will be foremost in your mind and that the best way to guarantee this is by making sure you have the right talent in place. An effective hiring and onboarding process can determine the long-term success of any new hires and we also appreciate that constantly returning to the recruitment pool can be a costly and disruptive affair for your business.
We believe in the potential of technology to help empower your people and we also appreciate that your HR teams are far more than just admin robots which is why we’ve designed our Cloud HR solution to specifically tackle the challenges faced by HR professionals day in, day out, freeing your people teams to focus on the humans not the resources.
If you would like to find out more about how Cloud HR can help empower your HR teams and hone your hiring process, Contact one of our friendly team members today.