New Zealand, despite being one of the easiest countries in the world to start a business in, has a problem. It’s an issue that affects every kind of enterprise, big and small, local or based overseas. It’s possibly one of the few issues that cross all bounds of industry and scale, and failing to take it seriously can quickly result in the end of your business.
We’re talking, of course, about finding, hiring and keeping critical talent in your workforce.
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Why is retaining talent so difficult right now?
Here’s a scenario that will be familiar to any business owner: you want to expand your business, or develop a new product or service, and you decide you need to hire some additional help or expertise. You’re a great person to work for, you think that you have a positive work culture and your workers don’t walk away frowning at too few zeros on the end of their paystubs either.
What’s so difficult?
In theory, nothing at all. But in practice, we are living in a very tumultuous period when it comes to staffing our operations. Staff turnover is on the rise, with about 30 per cent of your workforce likely to need replacement over the next 12 months.
The younger workers, which are becoming all the more important to the New Zealand economy, are even harder to keep a hold of. Only 20 per cent of people born between 1980 and 2000 (i.e. millennials), plan to stay with their current employer for the long term.
Only 20 per cent of people born between 1980 and 2000 (i.e. millennials), plan to stay with their current employer for the long term.
It’s proving more and more difficult to find and retain key talent—so it’s no wonder that the majority of employers today say skill shortages are going to affect their ability to do business.
Tough times ahead? Not necessarily. There are solutions to this talent gap issue that your business can implement right now to help retain your key people, protect your business if something does go wrong, and find ideal replacements if necessary.
Here are just a few:
Strong hiring practices
One of the best ways you can ensure that you keep a hold of your talented workers is to hire carefully from the very beginning. Start as you mean to go on.
For example, there have been multiple studies that show that internal recruitment, employee referrals and positive onboarding processes all have a positive impact on how long your new recruit stays for.
If a new position opens up, find someone who has already proven themselves in the business to fill it. If you can’t, ask current staff for recommendations—after all, you can only gather so much about someone’s personality from a brief interview. Finally, once you do have that new hire, ensure their first few days are positive ones. Get them involved socially, make sure they know exactly what their role entails, and always, always show your appreciation for a job well done.
Employee benefits
You also need to retain the key people you have already found. You can do that in plenty of ways: increase pay, reduce hours, provide more work/life balance, and so on.
But rather than trying to compete with everybody else in your industry on how much you pay your workers, you could provide employee benefits instead. Trauma insurance, life insurance, income protection, health insurace: these are all extremely valuable provisions for an experienced workforce.
Rather than trying to compete with everybody else in your industry on how much you pay your workers, you could provide employee benefits instead.
So valuable, in fact, that your key people may be less likely to leave for one of your competitors if you provide them and your rival doesn’t.
Summary
Follow these tips, and you’ll find that high staff turnover becomes a problem of the past. Strong hiring practices keep your new recruits on board with your vision, while employee benefits and key person cover ensure your current workers stay engaged—and protect you in case something happens outside of your control.
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