Why do some businesses succeed and others fail? There are many different reasons. One of the most common signs of a company in turmoil is a high staff turnover. This is because the rate of staff turnover is indicative of how well an organisation is implementing effective talent management.
There are ways that you can recruit and manage staff to add value to a business, ensuring all employees’ wellbeing. In this post, we’ll expand on this and talk about why recruiting and retaining the right employees is so important.
Why is recruiting top talent important?
Any organisation wants the best-fit employees for the job. This means employing people that add value, and perpetuate a healthy culture, which simultaneously brings success, fulfillment and meaning to the employee. However, this fit might look very different depending on the business, which makes it essential to understand exactly what kind of talent you are looking for.
Successful recruitment practices begin with a clear understanding of the business’ goals and objectives, and the kind of skills and abilities that staff require to make these goals a reality, in the long term. It’s about proper planning, so that hiring is not a reactive process, but forms part of a broader strategy to ensure the sustainability of the business.
What is talent management?
Effective talent management is about more than getting the right people onboard. It’s about helping them optimise their capabilities, while keeping business goals in mind. It’s about training employees with a future-focus, keeping them engaged and motivating them to effectively contribute to achieving short and long term goals. So at the end of the day, you have successful, happy employees and a successful organisation.
It all starts with the effective recruitment of top talent. Hiring new employees and training them requires resources. Much time and money is wasted when employees are not the right fit, and aren’t able or willing to meet the company’s needs.
Be clear on what you need upfront. Thereafter, ask the hard questions in the screening and interview processes to ensure as much as possible that this is going to work for the prospective employee as much as it will for the organisation.
The cost of recruitment
There are different ways to measure the cost of recruitment. On a very basic level, it involves taking into account the fact that new staff need to learn about the business, and then settle into their roles and departments. This is all while making the effort to build relationships with other team members, contractors and suppliers. All of this takes time, and in the fast-paced world of today, there isn’t any time to waste.
Investing in staff
Overall, hiring new staff and retaining them can be seen as an investment strategy. These investments can pay out in the long term if you make the right choices. In addition, if you know how to train, engage and consistently motivate your staff.
Of course, we are all human, and there will be lessons to be learnt along the way for any employee and manager. However, having a concrete idea of the skills and temperaments needed for given roles in a business and ensuring alignment between the prospective employee, skillset and the culture-fit can ensure a solid investment when it comes to talent management.
In other words, companies that invest in their staff, and make wise recruitment decisions, benefit from productivity, loyalty and talent retention.
How to retain the right people?
You can hire the most intelligent and talented employees, but if you don’t develop them, compensate them well, reward performance and motivate your staff in ways that they personally need to flourish, you’ll lose people who might have been assets to your company. This makes it even more essential to offer the support, tools and the working environment employees need to thrive.
This also means being able to manage employee grievances and conflict in a productive way, while identifying any toxic and destructive behaviour early on, so that it doesn’t grow and lead to breakdowns in communication and productivity.
Learning about how to recruit top talent
All of the points mentioned above are important, but how do you actually put these into practice?
There are many different approaches to human resource management. At SACAP Global, we aim to educate and empower leaders that understand how to recruit, manage, and keep top talent.
Would you like to learn more about some of the tried and tested approaches to talent management? Sign up for our Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent micro-credential. This course can be stacked with Managing and Motivating People, and recognised as equivalent to a module within the Bachelor of Applied Social Science Degree. Completing both micro-credential courses can contribute to a more productive understanding of human behaviour and interaction.
Contact us to find out more about our specialised micro-credentials rooted in Applied Psychology, Business Management and Communication.