Finding, retaining and engaging top talent is more important than ever before, as more than 2 million Americans voluntarily leave their jobs every month, and 74 percent of the workforce would consider finding a new job. Forward-thinking companies already invest their time and resources in identifying top talent, because they know that if they don’t, someone else will, and the cost of losing high performers can be anywhere from 1.5 times to more than triple their burdened salaries.
Do you know who your top-performing employees are? If not, it pays to find out.
Take time to invest in your talent-acquisition efforts with these five best practices:
- Establish an Employment Brand. Before any organization can take the plunge into the extensive talent pool, it must establish an effective employment brand. Your employment brand should reflect the employee’s experience and also resonate with potential new hires. A successful employment brand will positively influence the way others think about your organization.
- Engage Employees. Employers need a vision that is centered on engaging their workforce. As it stands today, only 13 percent of the world’s workplaces are “highly engaged.” With this large gap threatening businesses’ bottom lines, companies realize that employee satisfaction is as equally important as customer satisfaction. Identifying engaged employees can be tricky, but oftentimes when you see it firsthand, you know. Signs of an engaged employee include a sincere passion for his or her work, a clear understanding of his or her purpose, a dedication to going above what is required and being a true team player.
- Encourage Learning. Move new hires to valued contributors faster by empowering them with the learning tools necessary to develop strong leaders of your organization. New hires are typically enthusiastic about new beginnings; they have ideas and innovations they want to share. A learning management platform provides an outlet for these employees to share expertise, access a central knowledge base and measure their professional progress.
- Keep Track. High performers are never satisfied; rather, they are continuously looking to improve. It is important companies keep track of their progress, starting day one. Pay attention to training courses completed, a new certification earned, a compensation increase added and so on. An automated single-database solution can put all of this information at your fingertips, such as generating a comprehensive report showing a complete timeline of improvement. Tracking employees’ progress will help companies identify and separate the high performers from the rest of the pack.
- Leverage Existing Data. Think of all the data kept for just one employee: job history, benefits, payroll, performance goals, etc. This kind of data repository can be significantly useful for finding, retaining and engaging top talent. Companies that truly leverage these existing data points are doing so in big ways: building succession plans, building development plans and deciding which performers to invest in for the long haul – all based on objective analytics, not subjective inquiries.