Employee retention has emerged as a top priority in 2016 with a renewed emphasis on nurturing talent relationships, according to a recent recruiting trends report from LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
Talent leaders believe the quality of the new hire is the most important metric used to track performance, and most organizations are using employee turnover to measure performance, the report found. (1)
So what you can do as a hiring manager to keep talent from jumping ship, and what’s the new hire’s responsibility in this equation?
1. Hiring Manager Stay Interviews
The stay interview is an important feedback mechanism between hiring managers and new hires to learn what’s working and what’s not working. Stay interviews move beyond performance reviews, where a collegial partnership can develop between a hiring manager and a new hire. New hires who left other organizations to work at yours may be wondering whether they made the right decision during the first six months or first year of employment. This is where hiring managers can make a crucial difference since, as we often say, people don’t leave bad companies; they leave bad managers.
Stay interviews reduce employee turnover by helping hiring managers to develop two-way communication, where they can get a pulse on employee satisfaction and engagement levels, using questions such as:
1. What is it about your job that makes you want to jump out of bed?
2. What is it about your job that makes you want to hit the snooze button?
3. What are you passionate about?
4. What’s your dream job?
5. If you changed roles completely, what would you miss the most?
6. If you won the lottery and didn’t have to work, what would you miss?
7. What did you love in your last position that you’re not doing now?
8. What makes for a great day at work?
9. If you had a magic wand, what’s the one thing would you change about your work, role, and responsibilities?
10. What do you think about on your way to work?
11. What part of your job bothers you the most? (2)
To help facilitate the acculturation process Victoria James Executive Search recruiters check in with new talent placements and their hiring managers frequently during the first 90 days and then quarterly to gather feedback. We do everything we can to ensure that everyone is on the same page with the hopes of forging a solid connection for many years to come. However, as recruiters, we spend a lot more of our time chasing down hiring managers to gather this feedback than we do with talent placements/new hires. This has been our experience on many occasions, unfortunately, and this reflects badly on organizations that say they’re trying to make a priority of retaining talent.
2. New Hire Communication Responsibilities
New hires also have a responsibility to communicate in a way that ensures their success at the organization that now employs them. There are a number of reasons why new hires may choose not to stay with an organization, and sometimes it has little or nothing to do with the hiring manager. New hires may have unrealistic expectations when starting a new job, thinking they’ll be promoted within three months or believing they can make more money elsewhere.
But more often than not there’s a communication breakdown or barrier between new hires and their hiring managers, where a new hire isn’t being open and honest about what’s working and what’s not working. They may be fearful or risk-averse by nature, but that’s still no excuse for failing to answer the stay interview questions as freely and transparently as possible. New hires should remember that good communication is a two-way street and they shouldn’t expect to make a good fit somewhere without it.
What’s more, good communication skills can distinguish new hires from their competition. Company recruiters already expect new hires to have knowledge skills that are commensurate with their specialized business degrees— core business knowledge, strong analytical, quantitative, and technical skills associated with an MBA degree, for example. Yet employers ranked communications skills, on average, twice as important in the workplace as managerial skills, according to a recent GMAT survey.
In fact, the top four skills that employers were seeking in new hires were all communication-related: “Oral and listening skills were ranked first and second-highest, and these were followed by written communication, presentation skills, and fifth-ranked adaptability, a teamwork skill.” (3)
What Are You Searching For?
Let us apply our considerable skills and experience for you. If you’ve worked with Victoria James Executive Search before, you already know how we provide strategic value for our job seekers and HR talent professionals.
All Victoria James Executive Search recruiters have a proven track record of senior-level placements at Fortune 500 firms as well as start-ups.
Smile! We leave with the following superb job-interviewing tip guaranteed to land your next job with style
from the folks over at The Poke in the UK (try these at your own risk 
):
Show you are good at delegating responsibility by sending someone else to the interview.
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References:
1. LinkedIN Talent Solutions, Global Recruiting Trends 2016 Report. https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/GRT16_GlobalRecruiting_100815.pdf
2. DeZube, Dona. 11 Great Stay Interview Questions, Monster.com, (Accessed June 7, 2016). http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/interviewing-candidates/stay-interview-questions.aspx
3. The GMAT Blog Hub. Employers Want Communication Skills in New Hires, August 7, 2014 (Accessed June 8, 2016). http://www.mba.com/us/the-gmat-blog-hub/the-official-gmat-blog/2014/aug/employers-want-communication-skills-in-new-hires.aspx
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