When we are losing talented employees with valuable corporate knowledge and experience, it’s common to take a look at our retention strategy (assuming we have one) to figure out what’s wrong. Have we identified the right critical positions and individuals to know where we should focus our attention? Are we paying enough? Are we offering the right benefits? Career development? Why aren’t we keeping the people we want to keep?
All too often, we forget about the FIRST step in our retention strategy: recruiting. If you want people to stay, you need to recruit people who are likely to stay, and do so in a way that makes it more likely they will stay with you. The best way to do that is with a lot of transparency.
When you are writing your job advertisements and conducting interviews, be sure to set realistic expectations about the job. Let them know what they are getting into. If you expect them to work as part of a team rather than individually, say so. If there is a lot of travel, let them know if they’ll be flying in Economy or Business. If you expect them to expand into new responsibilities in the first year, let them know now what you ultimately expect them to do. If there are unique challenges within your company that they will need to deal with, or if there are big changes coming soon, be open about what it will take for them to be successful. If they think they are coming into one sort of environment, and then they find out the job is very different, they are more likely to leave in frustration.
Too many managers say, “I can’t do that! If I tell them what it’s really like to work here, no one will want to work here!” Well, think about that for a moment. If you’re not honest about the job, you’re likely to hire someone who doesn’t want to work that way and who will leave as soon as they have a chance. You are better off hiring someone who wants to work the way you expect them to work, and the only way to do that is to be honest and create realistic expectations in the recruiting process.
Plus, let’s face it, if you’re afraid to tell people the truth about your work environment, maybe you should be fixing your work environment.
When it comes to being open about the job, it’s very important to be honest about career paths so they know what to expect. If you think someone in this role should expect to stay there for three years before moving up, say so. If a candidate expects to move into a new role every year or 18 months, then they are not a good fit for this position, and if you hire them then you are simply creating a retention problem that you could have avoided.
It may be hard to talk with accuracy about what’s going to happen. Obviously, you don’t have a crystal ball, so anything you talk about in the recruiting process has the potential to change. Still, if you are transparent when hiring, and then open about any changes in the situation that will impact the employee, they are more likely to go along with it and stay with you.
When people leave you because they are frustrated, it’s often because their expectations don’t match the reality of the job they’re in. You can fix that in the recruiting process, and save yourself a lot of headaches later.