What Are Human Resources Techniques For Keeping The Best Employees?

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Liz Strikwerda

Content strategist and corporate blogger (2000+ posts). Her work has been featured on G2's Learning Hub, Human Resources Today, Better Buys and over 500 business websites. She plays bluegrass mandolin and enjoys sailing her catamaran and hiking in the red rock wilderness of southern Utah. Connect with me on LinkedIn

What are human resources techniques for keeping the best employees?

  1. Improve your hiring practices
  2. Create a structured onboarding program
  3. Provide a career path
  4. Respond to employee feedback
  5. Review performance fairly and often
  6. Improve work/life balance
  7. Create an outstanding employee experience

Create a Strategy

In this age of job-hopping, you have to get serious about retention. A haphazard approach will fail. Develop a retention strategy and then weave it into your corporate culture.

Improve Hiring Practices

If you attract higher quality candidates, you’ll have a head start for future retention efforts. Technology and training is key. If you have the resources, hire talent acquisition specialists instead of HR generalists. They can give you a competitive edge in today’s labor market. They will also know how to use the most effective recruiting software. Pay as much attention to the candidate journey as your customer journey. A good ATS provides the best hiring experience. That leads us to our next topic: HR software.

Use Software to Shorten Your Time-to-Hire

If you aren’t using an applicant tracking system (ATS), this should be your first priority. You can’t keep good employees if you can’t hire good employees. And the best employees are hired first. You can’t hire faster without better technology.

An ATS also expands your hiring pool. Especially if your company has multiple openings at a time. ATS’ can quickly advertise on more places online. When you cast a wider net, you will have more options.

The ATS will quickly isolate the best candidates to concentrate on. You can schedule interviews for your finalists. ATS’ speed up decision making with collaboration tools.

The result? You can make an offer before your top pick is snagged by your competitor.

Write Better Job Descriptions

This is a foundational hiring process that many companies neglect. Spend time crafting highly-detailed postings. An effective job description targets the employees you need. This jumpstarts the filtering process.

Improve Your Interviews

Good interviews identify the best candidates in a systematic, non-biased way. A good interview will include the following:

  • Two-sided evaluation: let the candidate ask about your company and whether it reflects their values
  • Skill validation: make sure the candidate has the skills they list on their resume
  • Behavior assessment: ask the candidate to relate experiences that will reveal desired attributes
  • Cultural fit: use the experiences shared to decide if the applicant will thrive in your company
  • Sell your company: throughout the interview, express your corporate values and company brand
  • Structured scoring: create a system that will remove ‘gut feelings’ as a factor (Don’t eliminate an applicant based on an impression.)

Strengthen Your Employer Brand

Identify your values and mission. Solicit feedback from current employees. Make sure you are portraying an accurate picture of your corporate culture.

Read current/former employee reviews on Glassdoor and other evaluation sites. For good or ill, peer reviews are more important than company-created marketing. Use the negative feedback to fix problems.

Express your culture and values consistently across your recruitment marketing. Inspire current employees to be brand champions.

Consider Non-traditional Employees

If you are struggling to find conventional full-timers, consider non-traditional employees. Some of the best workers would rather freelance for several companies. If you need a niche skill, a contractor may provide more expertise. They’ve probably worked for similar companies in your industry. If so, you will benefit from their diverse experience. (And they may be more cost effective.)

Is there a talent shortage in your industry? Some companies hire formerly-retired employees part-time. If you need highly-educated specialists and aren’t having any luck, this may solve your problem. These so-called ‘boomerang’ employees can also serve as mentors for younger employees.

Create a Structured Onboarding Program

It’s well-documented that structured onboarding improves retention. Use an automated onboarding system to help you.

Take away the stress of the first day by telling them in advance where to park and how to clock in. An automated system can send them a welcome email with all pertinent first-day information.

Ensure their manager or someone on their team greets them at the door. Make sure everyone on their team introduces themselves the first day. Set up their workstation before they show up.

Let them complete new-hire paperwork online at their convenience. Onboarding software with e-signature simplifies this.

Don’t cram everything into the first day or week. Prioritize establishing a relationship over completing processes.

Nurture Your Best Employees

Never stop asking for feedback. Train your managers to maintain communication. Especially with employees that are relatively autonomous. Make sure improving the employee experience is part of your culture.

If you have an HR portal, include an anonymous suggestion box for timid employees. As with the peer reviews discussed previously, make changes in response to negative feedback.

Provide a Career Path

If your best employees can’t advance in their career, they aren’t going to stick around. Use ongoing training and mentoring. Promote from within. Your current skilled employees are your best source of future managers and executives.

Conduct Fair Performance Reviews

Structured performance reviews are as important as structured onboarding. Make your process transparent. Keep everyone on a level playing field. Evaluate often. Train your managers on best practices. Human resources software with performance review tools can help you up your game.

Improve Work/life Balance

Schedule flexibility is as important to millennials as a decent salary. Non-traditional schedules and flexible work arrangements aren’t a zero-sum game. Flex-time and work-at-home days can boost productivity if implemented appropriately. And they improve the employee experience significantly. This, in turn, strengthens your company brand.

An automated scheduling system will help. You can easily create and manage non-traditional schedules that keep employees happy. (Without lowering productivity.)

Effective Human Resources Is Your Best Retention Strategy

The Human Resources team shapes every aspect of the employee experience. Hire the best HR professionals. Give them the technology and resources they need to execute a successful hiring and retention strategy.

ApplicantStack Human Resources Software

SwipeClock ApplicantStack provides industry-leading products that help HR professionals improve employee retention. For more information about ApplicantStack Recruit and Onboard, visit ApplicantStack human resources solutions.

Simplify HR management today.

Simplify HR management today.

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