Employee Recruitment and Retention Insights
Thank to you Chris Gregg and Lightyear for hosting the Developing a leading employer brand - recruitment and retention panel discussion at their offices at Catalyst Titanic Quarter in May 2022.
We’ve shared some key takeaways from the discussion below.
On recruitment:
Building your employer brand takes time but is worth the investment
Discussions around salary levels and where to get reliable information led to us discovering that Liberty IT support an annual salary survey, the NI salary survey, which is run by Patrick Robertson from Performance Reward Consulting. It's 'by invitation only' but Jane from Plotbox has checked and Patrick is happy for us to share. There is a fee to participate. Patrick’s contact details are below; Jane has advised the deadline is Wednesday 6th December so you may want to be quick! : patrick@performancerewardconsulting.com
There was a general acknowledgement that there is a limited pool of talent in NI and some companies are looking to hire outside NI; Plotbox’s most Senior Hire is based in Manchester.
Flexibility policy is now a key consideration at offer stage, second only to salary.
Ensure your Careers page is fit for purpose
Most companies undertake outbound recruitment, using Sales Navigator on LinkedIn to see who is “open to offers”, asking for intros, bringing them into your workspace to meet other staff and check for fit. Recruiters are targeting people who have been in positions for 3 years on LinkedIn. Some companies reluctantly using recruiters.
Be honest and upfront about being entrepreneurial, share your story/vision.
On retention:
On staff retention and employee development, discussions took place around progression paths and growth opportunities being key to retention. B-Secur have a framework with 5 levels which gives a clear path for those wanting to see a future. Tara shared that the Monzo Growth Framework has proved to be a very useful tool for them.
On leadership, there was recognition that engineers who have been with the company for 3 years + need Leadership/Development opportunities. B-Secur are an accredited ILM Level 5 provider and offer this in-house training to team members keen to progress into leadership roles.
Most companies present offer share options to senior staff, some to all. Chris Gregg has offered to share a useful tool to demonstrate total rewards, which has proved to be a useful retention tool.
Recognise that some positions have a shelf life and not all attrition is bad.
Encourage a culture of innovation, engineers love to work on new things.
Finally, on the question of when you need an in-house HR resource - Lightyear have just recruited their first HR role and the tipping point was the pace of growth and the impact on core productivity of current line managers.