Targeted use of recruitment tech can, if utilised well, be the cure to persistent recruitment outreach failure. But can the very same recruitment tech be utilised for the retention of talent within critical roles?
The current recruitment market is tough. But retaining staff is, by some degrees, even tougher.
In the post-COVID environment of rising prices, disrupted working ecosystems, unsustainable working practices and a fast-changing digital world, employees are rapidly changing their expectations of what constitutes a “good” working environment and have flipped the recruitment rulebook as a result.
A newly-found candidate dominance of the recruitment narrative – that of candidates simply quitting jobs they don’t like on a dime, and employers striving to retain haemorrhaging staff – has flipped the recruitment world upside down. The ongoing effects of the great resignation are still being felt, it seems.
The retention of critical staff is a high priority for many thousands of employers trying to ensure business continuity, especially on the edge of a recession. But in a hyper-competitive recruitment and retention market, it’s harder than ever to keep staff in place, especially if they don’t feel invested in, trusted or heard.
So what can employers do to guarantee effective cultures of staff retention? Well, part of the answer lies in the very tech you used to bring them into your company.
So here are some helpful hints at how recruitment tech deployment can help empower your staff to stay at your company.
Data, data, data.
- To retain staff, you need to inspire them, show confidence in them, invest in them, direct them, encourage them and drive them forward. You need to represent their future, and doing that takes more than simply dropping them a little more money each year. It means using data to improve their entire employment experience.
- Pretty much any retention strategy you take will need data, gleaned from recruitment tech to inform how you approach your staff, and how you build a case for them staying with your company. Successful retention hinges on communicating your team members’ place with the fabric of your company, where they are, where they could be, and why it matters to you, the business leader or manager.
- This sort of reporting needs data – performance reporting, peer assessments, KPIs hit and customer satisfaction reports are all data points that indicate your staff members’ place within your company.
- Good recruitment tech – such as HR-focused platforms that incorporate performance management tools, for example – ensure data is accessible and relevant and, as we discuss below, becomes the fuel of retention.
Establish cultures of improvement.
- It cannot be ignored that companies who are seen to invest in their tech stack give their staff an obvious sign they are willing to invest in their wider workplace and that teams are worthy of tech investment.
- This establishment of a culture of continual institutional improvement, driven by technical innovation, will do much to retain talent – no one wants to work for a company stuck with legacy processes, run by business owners with zero enthusiasm to upgrade their processes.
Commitment to training and development.
- The end-point of an improved and established culture of recruitment tech investment is employees being invested in too.
- The debate around reskilling and retraining of domestic workforces is well-trod ground – but safe to say almost all workers in the UK at some point in the coming 10 – 30 years will need drastic amounts of reskilling to meet the demand of a more digital and interconnected workplace.
- Those critical digital skills, that we’re already lacking as an industrialised nation, need to be taught, and employers need to take the lead on that training. This commitment to investment in career growth is a boon for retention strategies, especially in industries that are most affected by the rise of automation and AI.
“Re”-onboarding.
- The principle of “re”-onboarding staff has picked up traction since the advent of the pandemic.
- As workflows changed, remote work increased, and whole industries closed and reopened, empathetically minded employers re-onboarded staff as they returned to the office or moved to Zoom-based working.
- Re-onboarding, in theory, is a little like a performance review, but it’s more about setting a new context for workers who have seen their role change. Recruitment tech plays a vital role in providing the platform, the data and the ongoing performance adjustment metrics to help staff re-onboard and start their “new” (old) role from fresh.
Career progress, in real-time.
- Lastly, recruitment tech provides a tangible, accessible platform on which employees and employers can view personal career growth in real-time.
- While ostensibly a part of performance management strategy, incorporating tech that provides worker and employer with a single point of information regarding performance, behaviours, targets, goals and company feedback.
- In the context of staff retention, performance visibility can be the difference between a staff member leaving your company or staying – your teams want to see how their work is being valued.
- Our advice for business owners and HR leads is never to silo your performance management feedback. Use tech to create an open-door policy of career growth feedback and input from management and mentors to staff: you will see an immediate positive impact on your retention rates.
A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.
At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.
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