We recently had a client partner tell us they, “hire for personality and train for skill.”
Another one, a CFO, said, “Finding talent is the biggest challenge we face, not talent with the skills to do the job, but talent we can trust with our business.”
Ask yourself four things. Does my current team:
- Inspire my trust?
- Respect my business?
- Desire to do their job well?
- Want to make a difference?
These are the golden egg questions because you are only as good as your people. Period.
How do you create an environment that attracts outstanding talent and retains them in today’s economy? Consider these strategies:
- Hire for people skills. Believe in your people, pay them well for their work and attitude, put them first. QuikTrip’s employees get 10-25 days of vacation, 10 days of sick pay, can buy two extra weeks off and request two more weeks without pay. What do they ask of their employees in return? Request your day off in advance and give management time to re-staff without disrupting the team. Result? More than 1,000 job applications a month. Trusted employees who value their employer and will do all they can to grow the business.
- Use quality of the hire as your metric – not how fast or how cheap. Plan and execute a talent acquisition and retention strategy that hires the right person, not the available person. Dig for the right person, that person you can trust with your business. If it takes longer, it is worth it.
- Make it a goal to value your employees, living this message, “If you make us more valuable (and that doesn’t mean more profitable necessarily), we make you more valuable.” If you do that, the employee will respond. “If you help me grow and flourish, I’ll help the company grow and flourish.” This is not sentimental, this is trust based and has to occur on both sides.
- Find the employee who engages beyond your company boundaries. There are always smart people outside your business and your employees should know them. Encourage employees to be entrepreneurial so they can leverage their network for your business. One of HubSpot‘s mantras is, “Invest in individual mastery and market value.” It pays off for your company and the individual.
- Provide a work environment that physically encourages collaboration. One where your owners and your trusted employees can challenge each other’s thinking, push the envelope and make decisions. Use mobile white boards, laptops, multiple areas for sitting or standing to freely create. It doesn’t need to be cost prohibitive. Make a few small changes with modular work spaces and open areas that allow for chance encounters that result in ideas and solutions not previously considered.
Truly evaluate your current corporate culture, recruiting practices and talent management strategies as well as yourself. Walk the talk and do it daily.
It will make a positive difference for recruiting and retaining talent who can be trusted to act like an owner, value your business and impact your bottom line.
