Tips to Improve the Recruitment Process and Increase Employee Retention

Recruiting is hard enough these days, but retaining employees can be even harder. As there are more and more remote work opportunities out there for job seekers to take, the cost to retain employees continues to go up and up.

Factors like benefits, flex-time, and future growth opportunities can all make a big difference in your ability to find and keep good hires. The costs of onboarding new employees can be extensive and the trickle-down costs of teams operating at partial staffing can really snowball the solution.

If you are trying to find ways to locate the best hires out there, keep them long-term, and create a stellar work culture, this list of tips is for you!

Tips to Improve the Recruitment Process and Increase Employee Retention

1. Retention Starts at the Time of Recruitment

One of the reasons that recruiters lose people to other companies, is a lack of focus on retention at the time the person is hired. There is nothing less comforting than feeling like just another number, and many companies are guilty of rushing people through the onboarding process to try and get them right to work.

This attitude that there will be another time to talk about important portions of the hiring process can be a big turn off and many employees rightly feel that the time to discuss changes to their contract will never happen.

To prevent attrition due to new hires immediately jumping ship for a better opportunity, make each new hire feel wanted, invited into the company, and like their time matters. Employees want to see value being placed in their time as well, and being able to assure a new hire that the company cares about them with real actions that prove it, can be the difference between keeping your new hire or losing them to a better offer in a month.

2. Clarity About Advancement

Another big trouble spot for many recruiters is that the company that they are hiring for does not offer a clear, structured path to growth within their org. Many people who are engaged by recruiters are highly-skilled in their field and they can be picky about where they choose to work.

This means that companies that are unclear about advancement opportunities, or vague about whether there are paid education benefits for new hires, are probably going to lose these new hires to a competitor as soon as a better job turns up.

Remember that you want to hire people who see a future with their new company, not people who are going to stay for a few months and then leave. If you can’t show that there is a clear path to advancement at your company, you can’t prove to your new hires that they should stay.

3. Benefits Matter

As remote work is becoming the norm, many companies are being drowned out during the recruitment process because their competitors offer much better benefits to new hires. Gone are the days where a 401k was enough inducement to keep someone around until retirement.

New hires want to see that they will have healthcare and retirement benefits, but also that they will have paid sick time, flexible PTO, and other more creative benefits. To be fair to them, remote work offers up a whole host of benefits, the least of which is being able to be on the clock at any time of day. People seeking jobs rightly feel that, if they are willing to work from ten pm to 1 am to make up some time lost to a doctor’s appointment, they should be allowed to do so!

Flexibility and stress on work-life balance are essential options to give new hires if you want them to stick around.

4. Transparency and Personality are Key

Everyone has been hired by a company that clearly was bored with the hiring process. This feels terrible, and once you have reached a more advanced level in your career, you are not likely to tolerate this kind of treatment any longer.

For companies who are struggling to recruit new hires, or failing to retain existing hires, there is often a link to transparency and personal attention that has caused these issues. Make each person you interview and offer a job feel at home, valued, and heard. This is a conversation, not a meeting to list the facts of the company and some dry benefit options.

Employees always report that the transparency of the hiring process affects their decision about which job to take, and many people cite a lack of individual treatment and caring in exit interviews. Make sure that you are not neglecting to have real conversations with new hires and foster this friendship-style relationship as they join your team.

5. Use Technology to Advantage

As technology has advanced in the past five years, virtual hiring and virtual HR processes are becoming the norm. If your company cannot set up a virtual interview, or a simple means for new hires to engage with the onboarding process, they will likely leave as soon as possible.

There is no excuse these days for having clunky, or outdated communication options open to new hires and you will only scare people away by requiring in-person drop off of documents, or the use of snail mail or old-school online delivery methods.

To tie everything together you should definitely use a core HR solution like APS. Make sure that you are user-friendly and easy to engage with, and new hires will be far more likely to be excited about staying with your company.

Improving Hiring Rates and Retention is all About Making an Effort

Most of these solutions come down to the same hard truth. There can be no long-term employee relationships made without a long-term commitment to the hiring process.

If the company that you are recruiting for has no desire to demonstrate a long-term commitment to new hires, those people will return this lack of investment and leave the company as soon as possible. Recruitment is about being committed to excellence and staying committed to excellence, even after a new employee has been hired. Do you know that you can outsource the recruitment process? An EOR Company can help you.