4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

9 Strategies for Hiring the Talent you Can't Afford

Hiring new talent is a tremendous sign that you are growing and prospering.

You want to hire the best you possible can to keep that momentum going but how you define ‘the best’ could be costing you more in the long run. On paper you may decide that you can only afford to pay a new hire x amount of dollars and you may also be aware that talent costs more than you can afford to pay. Do you lower your expectations? Absolutely not. Our research has shown consistently for over 20 years that pay is not what motivates people. In fact compensation is at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs for employees. This is important to know when you are looking to hire ‘the best’ so you don’t let the number interfere with who you want to hire, first of all. Second, you need some strategies to help attract top talent, the people who want more than just a dollar figure when it comes to finding the right job.

Employee Pride: What Is It?

A client recently asked us whether, as part of their employee survey action planning, they should deliberately encourage their employees to take pride in working for their company. As it turns out, their results were fairly low on this measure so they were wondering if building employee pride is something they should focus on.
This question led us to look more deeply into the importance and role of pride within organizations. We started first with asking “what is employee pride anyway and is it important to work?”

We quickly realized that there are two distinct definitions of pride in workplaces – one form is taking pride in the work that they do, which employees develop when they feel good about themselves, trust in their abilities and are confident in managing the tasks and responsibilities expected of them. We believe that this type of pride is strongly linked to job satisfaction and commitment and, in our experience, employees who feel a strong sense of pride in their work are also:
More ambitious, energetic, focused and motivated,
More effective at tackling and overcoming work-oriented challenges,
Better able to set, achieve and maintain high standards and goals,
More likely to develop positive interpersonal relationships and to work as “team players,” and
Likely to communicate with more effectively their managers, peers and direct reports.

As with all action that builds job satisfaction and commitment, these strengths can translate into higher productivity, lower turnover and sick time and greater returns for organizations. That’s it’s important to concentrate on developing “pride in work” among their staff.
However, our client’s specific question was not about fostering pride in the work but, rather, about whether they should build the other kind of employee pride – that is, taking pride in the organization itself.

Rosalyn Carter said ‘A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be’.

An organization that wants to promote and cultivate a spirit of employee engagement, like a great leader, should be looking beyond what employees say they want, and giving them what they need. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies when it comes to knowing what is best for us and that applies to the places where we work.
At work, most of us find ourselves sitting at a desk. We may sit there for hours and there is scientific proof that it is killing us. So while many of us know we need to get up once in a while, most of us get lazy and days turn into weeks and before we know it, we are not getting out of our chairs the way we should.

And the consequences of sitting too much are really quite scary.

Consider these statistics:
• 24% higher risk of dying from any cause;
• Risk of having cardiovascular disease increased by 14%, while risk of having cancer increased by 13%;
• Risk of diabetes almost doubled.

You put so much effort into recruiting top talent but do you keep the momentum going after that talent signs on with you? Too often, managers place so much emphasis on recruiting, they neglect to make sure that they make a good first impression starting with their new employees’ onboarding and their first day on the job. You only get one chance to make a first impression yet many managers fail to make it as good an impression as it needs to be.
According to SHRM Foundation:
• Half of all senior outside hires fail within 18 months in a new position
• Half of all hourly workers leave new jobs within the first 120 days
• 30% of organizations use “passive onboarding” — onboarding that focuses mainly on compliance and little or no focus on clarification, culture, and making connections.

Connecting with new hires and making a meaningful first impression is vital if you want that relationship to thrive.

Beginning with day one, new hires should be connecting with their fellow employees and learning day-to-day procedures and learning the most important things they want to know.

Here are three great ways to make your onboarding process a great success:

The more engaged your employees are the greater your profits will be.

‘Digital natives’ is a term used in job ads that some lawyers say is code for ‘young worker’ suggesting that older people need not apply. Sadly these companies are missing out by narrowing their recruiting efforts against younger workers and excluding older workers.
In an article titled ‘Older Workers Are More Engaged, Boost Revenues’, author Dana Wilkie digs in to the study providing insightful facts about older employees that contradict the notion that older employees are more of a burden than a benefit to the workplace.

Misconceptions
1. Older workers cost companies more
Not true. The AARP study concluded that recruiting workers 50+ only increased a company’s total annual labor costs by 1 % or less.

2. Older workers aren’t interested in-nor are adept at-learning new things, such as technology.
Not true. The report found nearly 80% of older workers would be interested in learning new skills related to computers and communication technology. Older workers do not feel they have trouble keeping up with technology.

Employing older workers has other advantages too and include: experience, professionalism, work ethic, lower turnover, and knowledge.

It’s interesting that marriages often fail for the same reason people quit their jobs. At work when our time and efforts are not appreciated or respected, we don’t feel valued or that what we are doing has meaning. Over time, we start not to care anymore. The same is true in our relationships with significant others, where the most common cause for divorce is a lack of respect, which, over time, also brings couples to realize that one or both simply do not care for the other anymore.
But this is not new news. We asked tens of thousands of workers to participate in our employee survey as part of our annual independent research project and found the same results. The number one driver of employee satisfaction is the level of reward and recognition they receive but employees are not getting sufficient reward and recognition where they currently work.

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