How Are Organisations Attracting and Retaining Top Talent?

Attracting and retaining top talent is a crucial challenge for companies in 2024. Employee turnover rates are at an all-time high since 2020 and in today’s talent market offering a competitive salary and benefits package isn’t always enough to attract or retain talent, most likely because that’s what competitors are offering too. So, how can we combat it?

Let’s start with the true definitions of attraction and retention. Attraction is determined by what kind of talent you are finding and interviewing before solidifying a job within your company. Retention is how companies are creating structures, procedures and processes that keep their employees engaged. Attraction and retention go hand in hand as its not only about attracting top talent, organisations also need to understand how to retain talent.

There are a number of reasons why organisations should focus on attraction and retention as it leads to many benefits such as improving company performance, productivity, employee morale and encourages a positive employer branding.

Why a strong Employer Value Proposition is important

A strong employer value proposition is vital for the recruitment stage, this is what initially attracts and draws new talent to your organisation. To ensure this is embedded in your company culture, it needs to be lived and breathed within your organisation to retain employees. This is important to organisations as it reflects what employees can expect from you as a company and also what companies can expect from their employees.

So how can organisations ensure they are considering ways to attract and retain their top talent?

Competitive compensation and benefits:

Offering competitive salaries and benefits is a popular way to attract and retain your top talent. This can include health insurance, flexible work schedules, signing bonuses, commission schemes etc. However, this is simply not enough on its own, companies must adopt other ways to attract and retain.

Professional Development opportunities:

The top talent will often seek continuous learning and development opportunities to grow their own skill set. Through investing into employee training programs, workshops, credited courses and mentoring programs, these are all ways to help create career progressions and professional development. In turn, by investing into growing your employees’ skill set companies gain the return by broadening the role responsibilities and allowing those companies to have qualified and trained professionals. Offering opportunities for advancement in employees’ careers.

Promoting healthy work life balance:

Companies that support flexible schedules, remote work options, and reasonable working hours are more likely to attract and retain talent. By offering flexibility to employees, this may lead to increased retention and motivation. Studies show that 6% of employees changed jobs last year due to lack of flexibility and 12% left their profession/sector altogether.

Company Culture:

A positive and inclusive company culture is attractive to not only the top talent but to all your current employees. Organisations that prioritise a supportive and collaborative environment tend to retain employees longer. Skills and experiences can be taught almost anywhere, a strong positive company culture will set apart the reputation to candidates in the recruitment process.

So how do organisations benefit from this?

Focusing on the key benefits and offerings an organisation can make to its employees will ensure they have a higher competitive advantage, increased productivity from employees, adaptability and trust to change, enhanced reputation and employee morale and engagement. All these factors contribute to the long-term success of a company.

OUR ADVICE & RECOMMENDATIONS

Companies should look to incorporate not just one method of attracting and retaining new talent but should combine multiple methods to increase their likelihood of success. There are not a one size fits all approach, doing research into what works well for other organisations in your industry, assessing your specific budget and available time you have to invest and engaging with current staff to find first had suggestions will help you to find out what works best for your business.

If you have any questions around what you can do as a company to improve your attraction and retention methods please do not hesitate to get in contact with Robyn Whelan, Georgia Wilson or your usual AAB People contact.