Attracting and retaining the right talent for your business will play a vital role in ensuring a strong post-pandemic recovery. As organisations look towards their future business planning, it will be crucial that they are getting the right people in place to drive success, as well as making sure that they are aware of how employee priorities may have shifted over the past year and what steps they can take in order to make sure they retain their most skilled people.
With the impact of the "Great Resignation" already making itself known across the country, impending worries around workforce shortages, as well as indications pointing towards a scrappy, more competitive jobs market, mean that all organisations are waking up to the need to retain the services of existing talent is more important than ever.
The past couple of years has served to highlight the power of HR as an influential factor in many businesses. The knowledge, experience and skillsets of HR professionals have been leveraged time and time again by businesses, now even bleeding through into high level strategy planning. With the role of HR having its roots in communication and engagement with employees, it stands to reason that the experience of your HR people, along with the systems and technology which they use, should be utilised to help you tackle the challenge of retention.
We wanted to explore some of the ways in which we believe Cloud HR can help transform your HR teams, giving them the oversight and access to metrics they need in order to craft and drive forward policy which will keep your people engaged, motivated, happy and most importantly- wanting to stay with your organisation long term.
How can Cloud HR help?
Having the space to focus on humans, not resources, has been a key challenge for HR teams throughout the pandemic and beyond. The broad nature of their role means that in many cases, HR professionals can find hours upon hours every week being eaten up admin heavy tasks or chasing down anomalies, leaving very little scope for their talents to be leveraged in a more influential fashion.
The key to employee retention will lie in freeing HR teams from the doldrums of manual processes and time intensive admin tasks, allowing their expertise to shine through in crafting policies which drive forward engagement and wellbeing.
We built Cloud HR to help you achieve exactly that: removing the tedious elements of the HR functions and freeing your people teams to be the influential driving force that your business deserves them to be.
So just how can Cloud HR help boost retention?
Talent acquisition
At its heart, talent acquisition is the process by which organisations identify and acquire people with skillsets which meet their organisational needs. The process of talent acquisition is vital in ensuring that your business is hiring people who are sympathetic to not only your business goals but also your company culture.
Unlike your standard recruitment process, talent acquisition places a focus on long-term human resource planning. It is an attractive prospect for many organisations as it introduces a proactive element to the recruitment process, encouraging organisations to cultivate talent pipelines to have a continuous source of prospective people to draw from to fill positions.
In order to be able to fully realise their business strategies moving forward, organisations will be looking for workers that are the right cultural fit and will ultimately add value to the business over a span of time. The process of talent acquisition allows businesses to have the focus needed to refine their talent search.
By focusing the process of searching for talent, businesses allow themselves a greater degree of freedom in being upfront about their requirements. Retaining new talent can hinge on the recruitment stage with research suggesting that nearly 40% of new hires leave their jobs within the first six months and 20% of new hire turnover occurs within the first 45 days. This is because of poor onboarding and a lack of transparency about the culture they were entering into. As a result, new hires begin to regret accepting the offer over another and their energy is put into looking for a new job rather than excelling at the current one.
Honing and refining the interview stage can play a crucial part of the talent acquisition process as well as helping businesses find people who are more likely to stay the course. Cloud HR will play a huge role in enhancing the recruitment process, with sophisticated applicant tracking platforms- allowing businesses to refine talent pools around clearly defined skillsets and requirements, as well as having clear visibility of the recruitment process, ensuring that all candidates are being communicated with effectively regarding the role and company culture.
Employee perks
Employee perks play a vital role in not only making your organisation an attractive prospect for potential new employees but also serve as a way for companies to communicate their culture and ethos. Employee benefits are any form of non- wage based compensation. These benefits are designed as a supplement to an employee’s salary and can range from dental cover and health care insurance to perks on travel such as company cars and cycle to work schemes..
Research by Towers Willis Watson found that 75% of employees are more likely to stay with their employer due to the benefits package, with another study finding that 69% of those surveyed would choose one job over another on the basis of benefits offered.
The prevailing trend for many appears to be seeking out benefits that focus around health and wellbeing (such as increased leave allowances) rather than financial incentives. A recent Glasshouse survey found that 80% of employees would choose additional benefits and perks over a pay rise.
The effective communication of perks and benefits available to employees will play a vital role not only in the ongoing happiness of existing employees but will also serve as an attractive plus point to prospective new hires. Cloud HR helps your organisation build a programme of rewards and benefits which suits all of your people, regardless of their circumstances. Pulse surveys and other metrics can easily be pushed out through the system, helping you build a clear understanding of your employees’ priorities and ensuring any benefits packages remain relevant.
Most importantly, with the continued adoption of hybrid working policies, leveraging technology can be one of the most effective means of communicating benefits and reward schemes, as well as ensuring a consistency in perks for employees, regardless of where they choose to work from.
Learning and development
Employee growth and development plays a vital role in an employee’s wellbeing and job satisfaction. Research by MHS found that 96% of employees felt they would be more likely to stay with their current organisation if they offered a clear and well defined programme of training and development. Every person within your organisation will undoubtedly want to understand where the potential for growth is within their place of work . Fostering the desire for learning and development can go a long way towards ensuring the long term engagement and overall job satisfaction of an employee.
Cloud HR offers you the ideal framework to be able to craft a programme of learning and development which benefits each and every one of your people. Virtual learning platforms, microlearning courses and skills certification can all be managed through the system and clear roadmaps of employee development can be drawn up to help guide each individual along their developmental journey.
Existing qualifications and certifications can also be automated with instant notifications being pushed out to HR teams or management, ensuring that each employee can keep up to date and compliant with any particularly crucial qualifications such as first aid or fire warden certification. By having a constant overview of the learning and development of your people, you are better equipped to be able to drive a consistent and continuous experience of training and upskilling within your organisation.
Engagement and wellbeing
Even pre-pandemic, there was a greater drive for HR to focus on “soft” skills, emphasising a human approach in driving forward policies of wellbeing and engagement. The past few years have also seen a fundamental upheaval of not only modern working culture but also our personal lives as well, with the wider shift into hybrid working meaning that the work-life divide has become more blurred than ever.
With these various stressors and factors at play, it’s no small wonder that concerns around engagement and wellbeing are dominating conversations amongst HR teams and business leaders.
A key component in ensuring high levels of employee retention will be to make sure that your people are engaged and motivated within their roles. Employee engagement is the measure of how committed a person is both to their specific role and how closely aligned they are with the overall goals and values of their organisations. Low levels of employee engagement across the board can spell disaster for businesses looking to drive forward their future business strategies as it suggests a disconnect between their people and an organisational level.
As with many elements of work, the key to strong levels of engagement lies in having a proper overview of your people. Your HR teams, shift running managers and departmental heads should be encouraged to work with a feedback model, allowing constant communication with employees to help guide their development and to also offer praise for a job well done. Conversely, employees should be encouraged to also give feedback where relevant and allow their voices to be heard in order to help influence policy. Cloud HR can help you gain the metrics you need to understand the wider needs of your people, pushing out regular pulse surveys and other forums in order to ensure the voice of the employee is never lost within your organisation.
What’s next?
At Advanced, we believe in the potential of technology to help empower your people and allow your business to reach the heights that it deserves. Our Cloud HR solution gives you the oversight you need to understand the challenges facing your people, arming you with the information needed to help drive discussion around wellbeing and engagement. Cloud HR also offers a comprehensive framework to help free your people teams and support your business in crafting an effective training and development programme.
If you would like to find out how Advanced can help your organisation foster the talents of your people, get in touch with one of our friendly team members today.
