3 Focus Areas to Attract Top Talent To Your Company (and help you keep them)

Ask anyone. It’s impossible to find staff. The recruitment and resourcing item is the hottest topic on every board agenda right now
So what are you doing about it?
Successful companies have been defined by many things in the past - financial figures, leadership, years in business, and innovation, to name a few.

Rather than just focusing on these aspects, reflecting on how well your company manages its people assets and retaining good quality employees is the symbol of success that will define your company in the coming years.

3 areas you need to focus on to attract and retain top talent:

Look after existing staff

• Whilst it seems pretty obvious, the first step to resource in your business at the moment is to make sure your existing staff are working as efficiently and enthusiastically as possible. Lots of people out there offering large salary increases, sign-on bonuses, additional non-financial benefits, and more. Rest assured that all of your staff are aware of this, particularly the good ones, as it will be them that are being approached right now by other competitors and recruiters.

• You don’t just need to offer more money on more financial benefits. Stay close to your staff, talk to them about their goals and aspirations for the year and see how you can help them achieve their career goals and give them some perspective for the next 12 months or more

• Remind them of your vision, why your business exists and your dreams of fulfilling your customer promise

• Get clear on the strategy and make sure they are too. Make sure the business strategy aligns with their career and personal goals

Hire slowly, fire quickly

• I remind business owners of this all of the time. A great strategy I was once given by Jack Daley.

• Higher slowly-before the pandemic, we would have no question or hesitation in spending hours and hours on business development. At the moment, most businesses are not struggling with new sales on your opportunities, they are struggling with resources in the business to fulfil those opportunities. Business leaders need to pivot their time investment away from the sexy sales funnel into the resourcing of their business. Successful business owners this year will transfer the hours they would spend on business development into recruitment and resources.

• Meet with potential staff and great people in your industry. Follow people you’d like to hire on LinkedIn reach out to them to see if they would be open to a discussion or simply a coffee. All of our embedded sales skills that we’ve been using need to be diverted into the resourcing process

Get the whole team on board (including the board!)

• Incentivise your staff. If you’re happy to pay a recruiter 20% or more then make sure you are offering the same to your staff. There’s no bigger disincentive than to be effectively telling your staff that you’d rather pay an external consultant than to motivate them.

• Get your whole board on board. If you don’t have a board per se then make sure that all of the senior people in and around your business are aware of what you are looking for and who you want to hire. That includes business partners directors spouses mentors business coaches accountants lawyers and anyone else who cares to listen. Make sure they have a copy of the position description for every hire you’re looking to make and that they reach out to their networks to help you in your quest. It might seem drastic but I promise you that it’s better than sitting on your hands and hoping for the best.

It’s never been harder for business owners and anyone involved in business to achieve success in this area. It’s actually foreign to a lot of us - the level of commitment required has never before been this high.

Prioritise your existing and your future team - you’re nothing without them!