Creating Heaven in the Workplace

It's not easy making a hiring decision. Countless books have been written about the subject, but the average time a worker spends with one employer continues to decrease. (and no its not because of recruiters!) Unfortunately, to keep the best employee, hiring managers have to excel in two areas:

A: Following the right steps to make sure you're hiring the best person (Previous article is attached)

B: Establishing an environment that successfully retains employees(Please read below for suggestions on how to kill my business:)

A client shared with me recently that they don't get the best candidates because they can't compete in the areas of benefits, pay, and name recognition. In some aspects, he's right---if there is simply not enough money in the kitty, you may lose a candidate to a competitor. However, pay is only one of three main factors that can significantly influence someone to consider a job. So by addressing those other major factors, the mid-market employer can level the playing field. Its the same in retaining employees, by addressing key factors and covering your bases, you can reduce the risk in hiring employees that jump ship in six months.

Here are three key rules of thumb to help keep your top people happy and create heaven at your workplace. (or something close to it)

Align your Goals-Because your job description talks about what you would like to accomplish with the open job, not years of experience (right? right :)--you've created a great tool---what your goals are for the position. Your job interview questions and initial post-hiring meetings should be about those goals, and how the employee best feels they should address them. Encourage them to create a document that offers their plan of attack. If your plan and the employee's are way off, its not necessarily a red flag---but it just means that you need to circle back around.

Overcome the Generation Gap-There are a variety of fears for a new employee, but the biggest one might be their co-workers. How will they get along? Will a new graduate be accepted by your dominant baby-boomer office? Will your younger employees respect a new experienced hire? I should have never left. Encourage generational training for everyone to overcome rifts, recognizing and respecting the generational strengths and weaknesses of each group. OK teams segregate and plug along, but great teams are using everyone's contributions to kill the competition.

Establish a Growth Plan-Once you've got the goals hammered out, and got the team working as one unit, I believe long-term growth is the next challenge. Many companies do have development plans for their employees, which is great, but the best time to put this in motion---is right away at the interview. By simply recording 3 things the employee would like to accomplish in their career---it does two things:

1) It shows you care, and that you're interested in the employee's long-term development. If there are bumps along their way in their employment, this is a point for your side.

2) It holds them accountable. Its pretty hard for you to be blocking their professional outlook, or that you don't want them to succeed (as so many candidates explain to me about their bosses in my conversations) when you've asked them about what they would like to accomplish in their career at nearly the first possible moment. The burden falls back on the employee to come to you with ideas on how to achieve their goals.

As always, please contact me to provide additional candidates for your job search, or to help out a colleague that may be considering a new opportunity or is actively looking. This ezine is signing off for 2008. Have a great holiday!