Hire and Retain the Best Talent for Success

“Retaining and attracting high-performing talent is a top priority for sustaining excellence.” – Laurita Thomas

Sustainability and success of a company depend on its customers – internal and external. Without either, there really is no company. With the surge in new companies, being able to hire and retain the best talent in the market is becoming a struggle. However, this is one challenge that companies must overcome since before they can hope to have an external customer base, they should have been able hire and retain the best talent in the market. Having a great set of employees is not just a great investment but also a huge advantage to have in the current market scenario. High quality employees will make up for any shortage of staff numbers and also perform at the optimum level. When you hire and retain the best talent, your company is placing itself in a position of success. The right people doing the right jobs with good compensation and benefits will ensure that your external customers are served well leading to sustained success and profitability. If your company has been diligent to hire and retain the best talent, you can pat yourself on the back and claim to be a ‘futuristic’ company.

Despite the obvious merits to hire and retain the best talent, research shows that still only a very small percentage of people in top positions can claim that they are doing what it takes to get the right people and manage them in a way that they want to stay with a company or see a future in the top rungs in the company. It is strange, that there are still so many companies that have hired huge numbers of people but are unable to manage, lead, coach and retain them. They are constantly stuck in the vicious cycle of hire, train and exit. They are not hiring right. It just makes more sense to hire in order to retain and grow the employees.

With so much new technology and the ever changing market, it would be prudent to hire and retain the best talent – meaning people who are multi-skilled, possess a number of skills and talents and have a great attitude. It is not feasible any more to spend resources on hiring staff that would then require company specific training and then would still leave because their skills and knowledge is not amply recognized and rewarded.

To hire and retain the best talent should also be one of the main strategies of any company rather than hiring being a knee-jerk reaction to attrition or certain changes in the market. The hiring and retention strategy would include first making an assessment of how many employees are required, the skill sets they must have, the relevant experience they should carry and the kind of teams they would be best to work in. Following this assessment, the company must put together programs aimed at engagement and development and also have in place a reward and recognition program that will ensure they remain happy and loyal.

Top leaders of some highly successful companies have often expressed their views on the advantages of hiring and retaining good staff. To remain competitive in the market, consistency and seamless service is essential and these are possible only when there is least amount of strife and attrition in the company. Long term employees provide the much needed stability and experience and also prove to be better leaders for the company. Hire and retain the best talent if your company is to stand a chance in this highly cut throat environment.

Companies often make the mistake of hiring large numbers of people at meagre salaries and lower positions, in the belief that they are saving money. However, this is one of the worst mistakes. Mediocre employees will deliver mediocre service and have a low output at work. This in turn means that you could have some very disgruntled customers and some really shoddy performances at work. These all add up to additional costs – for example if you lose one customer due to poor service and products, there is a very high possibility that this one customer will spread the word around resulting in many more customers turning away and with time your company’s reputation is reduced to nothing. When you hire the best talent, quality trounces the need for quantity. To elucidate – A friend is highly talented and is a great administrator and organizer. When she joined this company, three people had left and all of them were managing different portions of the administration department. The salaries added together were quite high. This friend however, alone had all the skills and knowledge required for the jobs that the three of them were individually doing. When the company hired her, she got a massive increase on her last salary and yet this amount was lower than what the company was paying the 3 exited employees. She in turn, was able to single-handedly manage the job a lot better and produce results that were two-fold. The company had found an asset that didn’t cost them as much but got them the results they needed. Over time, this friend became a valued employee and received the rewards and recognition she deserved. It is just great business sense to hire and retain the best talent, like the person mentioned in the example.

Any company that faces high employee attrition knows how much sweat and blood goes into the recruitment process. It involves the time and effort of some senior leaders in the human resource department and a number of wasted man-hours when they don’t find the ‘right fit’ despite interviewing several candidates. Hiring as a process is onerous – advertising for the job positions, shortlisting candidate profiles, arranging interview schedules and venues, reimbursing / paying for outstation candidates and many other cumbersome processes. Wouldn’t it be great if you were a company known for treating its employees well such that even if you did need to recruit, the best and brightest talent in the market would come to you? Also if you hire and retain the best talent, the need to constantly recruit and be worried about work and service quality would be significantly reduced. You would have a happy workforce willing to produce results and put in the effort to ensure that their company succeeded and in turn guaranteed their success too.

The fact is that your employees are your first and most important customers. Just like your external customers have the ability to make or break your company, your employees too, have that ability. A disgruntled employee can wreak as much havoc on your company and blemish its reputation, as an angry customer. Your employees are your first and most powerful brand ambassadors – what they carry with them is how your company will be perceived. Interestingly, survey has revealed, that potential candidates and employees who are not treated well, often refuse to buy products and offerings of the company that enraged them. So not only is a company losing employees, they are also losing customers who would influence other customers to stop patronizing your company. The business’ success is at the heart of any company and if you can hire and retain the best talent, you would be insuring this success for a long time.

We have said in earlier expositions, that employees often emulate what their leaders do. Start then by having charismatic leaders who can engage employees and keep them motivated and willing to remain with the company for a long time. Great leadership and a good work environment encourage and motivate people, making them enthusiastic to get in to work. Given the high-stress levels, people also need more than just salaries to stick with a company – they must feel valued, know that their contribution is being recognized and that whatever extra effort they make will be rewarded.

When you hire the best talent, be prepared to treat them so and you can be sure that they will see no reason not to work with you for a long time.

 

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