This is a guest post written for us by Satnam Brar.
Good staff are the lifeblood of any business and the best sales staff are particularly worth hanging onto in the cut throat recruitment industry. So how do you retain your top performers and ensure that they stay with your business? We take a look at some top retention tips.
Stretch your talented staff
Your best people will naturally be ambitious. Sales people and recruiters always are and the ERP recruitment sector is growing and attractive. This is great news for your business, but means that there will always be other recruiters trying to poach your top performers! So make sure that they are stretched with challenging projects or ‘stretch’ targets and clients to keep them on their toes. This will give them a chance to shine and also be noticed by the senior managers in the business.
Avoid bureaucracy
Many younger employees in particular find unnecessary bureaucracy stifling. Remember, this the generation that has grown up with automation and digital ease, so if your business is still shuffling paper copies, you’ll struggle to engage them. Why not take point one into account and give your junior staff an IT implementation project alongside their recruitment role to develop their skills and show expertise!
Bad performance reviews
If staff get a bad performance review, they will rapidly feel demotivated. Many managers do still see the exercise as a tick in the box and fail to give their staff the impression that they genuinely care about their development. Staff need to feel that they have a long-term future within the business – and if their review is genuinely bad, then they need a development plan and a challenge to improve.
Lack of career planning
A lot of managers are equally lazy about career development and this is vital, as other recruiters will be circling for good ERP recruitment staff and looking to lure them away with tempting offers of more senior roles. So invest in their career development and have a progression plan in place with measurable actions. Regular review meetings will also show structured support and facilitate two way communications.
A lack of coherent strategy
Of course, modern businesses especially working in rapidly changing IT industries do have to remain flexible and fluid in order to survive and thrive as the market changes. However, if your strategy is simply to chop and change in response to every passing opportunity or trend, your top talent will rapidly get frustrated with the lack of direction and a perceived waste of time and effort when their projects are canned and replaced with something new. Your best staff will also want to be contributing to strategy, rather than simply listening to it and, if they are good, they will invariably have some great ideas about it. Involve and listen to them and consider delegating responsibilities too.
Have a vision
This links strongly to the point above. The best staff want to be sure that their work is being directed towards a sizeable long-term objective. They want to help the business achieve its goals and beat the competition. They are hungry for success so you need to understand the goals of the business and be able to communicate them. If you aren’t sure about these goals – involve your best staff. They will invariably have some great ideas.
Handling the best staff with ‘kid gloves’
Every staff member must be accountable in your agency and this includes elite staff. Don’t be afraid to manage them; putting good team members on a pedestal will confuse and alienate them from the rest of the team. Make sure you have regular catch-ups about their progress and manage them in a consistent way. Add your observations, ideas and suggestions to their work, without preaching. Commit to developing them.
Build a wider talented team
Exit interviews are a great way to hear more about the real reasons that people leave. You may often find that a wider team of poorly-performing individuals is a factor that recurs. If you rely on a few star performers and allow others to simply coast along on your success, the good staff will leave. Build a strong and robust team where everyone pulls their weight.
Don’t employ ‘yes’ people
Good staff want to be listened to and share their ideas. Often, the best staff in the recruitment industry will say things that you don’t necessarily want to hear. This may be because they aren’t right for your business, or disenchanted with the industry, or it might be that they are genuinely looking for ways to develop the business, win competitive advantage and shake up the game. Learn to identify both types and manage them accordingly. A good business will listen to its people and act on their ideas.
Lack of team spirit
Most recruiters love being part of a high-performing, fun and energetic office. Like all staff, they will come to work for a variety of reasons and will value feeling part of something bigger. Working as a team should be challenging, fun and lively – which means that if your office lacks atmosphere and energy; perhaps because of heavy hierarchy and onerous management, your top staff will look elsewhere! Focus on building up a great atmosphere which wows staff and clients alike when they walk into the office. Your staff will thank you and you should start to see a difference in your attrition.
As you’ll see from the points above, none of these ideas are rocket science and most will apply across all kinds of businesses and sectors, not just the challenging ERP sector. The crux of managing good people, is to allow them to live up to their potential that they showed at interview; the reason you hired them in the first place! Nurture them, challenge them, stretch them and celebrate success with visible rewards to build a culture of recognition and engagement. Suddenly you will find that your business is the one that people want to work in!
