Past Five

Attracting the Best, Means Keeping the Best

One question I get a lot being a founder and CEO of a staffing and recruiting firm is, "How do I attract the best talent?" And it all boils down to one thing: RETENTION. In order to attract the best employees, you need to retain the best employees.

Good employees tend to be around good employees. Another layer of that is how you communicate with them through the interview process. Step one is always selling your company to the candidate. You want them to be excited about your company before you go about trying to determine whether they're right for you. There's a big difference there, and a lot of companies miss that boat. They have such an imperial view of how great their company is that they stop selling it to other people.

You also need to demonstrate career paths that have occurred in your company. I have my marketing team create bios and career progressions of the staff that we have showing there was a way for people to advance and grow within a small- to medium-sized company. That really plays a role when people do research on your company. I've hired people who later said, "I heard about such-and-such's career progression. That was really an attractive thing for me."

Then it comes down to, how do you retain your current employees? Always have empathy. Think: What's fun for them?

Tension Over Quitters and The Let Goes

Studies have shown over the years that when someone in your office quits or gets fired, that within 60 days someone else will leave the organization. All of a sudden, there is a tendency of employees to look around and if their coworker was fired, say "Could it happen to me?" and if their coworker quit, they tend to say, "Is there something else, something better out there for me?"

This is not just a work phenomenon, it also happens socially. When someone's friends start getting married, it usually goes in bunches as well for much of the same reason. While I am not an expert in relationships, the work environment is something I do understand. When you have been working at a company, you have to assume that the conversations you have with your manager, your manager's manager, and human resources are for the most part confidential. Especially if they are regarding poor performance and/or discipline issues. If this is true, then it is the same for your coworkers.

So, when a coworker is let go, you must - I repeat YOU MUST (for your own sanity) - assume they had meetings with management about their performance, attitude, etc. Most terminated employees will have negativity, understandable for the most part since their income was eliminated, so you have to have objectivity when looking at the situation. If you were having a meeting about poor performance or attitude, would you want an e-mail broadcast to the entire company? Of course not, so assume your coworker was let go for a very strong reason. If you have been treated well by management, given respect and opportunity, don't let that feeling of good slip away because a coworker, perhaps even a friend, was let go.

So what about if a coworker quits, gets a job for money, a job closer to home, etc., etc.? Wish them well and explore if their departure could create an opportunity for you to grow within the company. If you weren't unhappy yesterday...if you weren't looking for a new job yesterday...why start today? Also, when a coworker leaves, voluntarily or involuntarily, ask yourself this question: Before they left, if you had to list the top 2 or 3 reasons your worked at your company, was the fact that they worked there one of those reasons? Usually it's not and should help satisfy your feelings of insecurity.

Only you are responsible for your career experience. Make many strong relationships with people at your level and above who can serve as confidants, mentors, friends and support. It's not about a relationship with one person, it's about making new work relationships everyday and realizing that the one thing - the main thing - you really have in common is that you both made a conscious choice to join your company! Give it your all every day. It's your career...it's your life!

Employee Retention Fun and Games

Retaining talent can be tough, especially in the staffing and recruiting industry. In my experience, people value feeling like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Retaining talent requires building relationships, showing appreciation and little bit of creativity.

Simona Covel at The Wall Street Journal recently wrote a piece about how small companies are thinking creatively to keep workers connected and happy at their companies. In it, you'll find some useful techniques, including some we use at The LaSalle Network. You can find her article here.

The Path to Growth is Organic

I recently spoke with Samantha Stainburn over at Crain's Chicago Business about the best way to grow a business. There are two options to satisfy a need for growth: hire more people and grow organically, or start acquiring other businesses.

Samantha recently ran a article that shows both sides of the argument. In it, I argue the point for organic growth, and here's why:

I started my company in 1998, and since then, we've expanded our services, opened three more offices (two more on the way), and gone from three employees to more than 70.

Our goal is to be a regional firm in six states in the Midwest. As I've thought about opening more offices, I considered buying other businesses. Most companies in our industry grow through acquisition because you're increasing your revenue exponentially on day one.

So, I asked, "For a few hundred thousand dollars, what can you buy?" The answer was, "Not much." I asked, "For a million dollars, what can I buy?" But in a services business like ours, the product is the people, and there are no guarantees that employees will stay.

In fact, when you do an acquisition, you risk a chance of turnover in your own company because management's time is now spent assimilating culture vs. taking care of the people you had before. If you're buying a company that has great people, the people at your company are thinking, "Uh-oh, they're going to take my job."

We did the analysis and decided that to do it right, we would need more manpower to manage the integration process. You see companies that have all the resources in the world, like HP and Compaq, struggling to integrate effectively, and we're a small company with limited resources.

Instead of laying out cash upfront to buy somebody we don't know, we decided to better train our existing staff and promote from within so they could do more, like open new offices. I took my most seasoned recruiter and turned him into a full-time trainer. Everybody here gets a least three hours a week of training.

In the end, why are you growing? If it's to provide better service to your clients and more opportunities for your employees, then you can accomplish most of those things organically.

 

The Trouble With Turnover

The concept of turnover is one that all managers deal with. There is good turnover (when an underperformer or person with a poor attitude leaves) and bad turnover (when someone you wish would stay leaves). The problem is that staff members don't always understand when turnover is good, all they see is someone they work with leaving the company.

When I opened my company, I read a book by Jay Goltz, and he had a saying that has stuck with me for nine years. He said that you could have Charles Manson, the serial killer, working for you and when you found out he was a killer and let him go, at least one employee would say, "I can't believe he fired Charlie!"

It is really a challenge to educate staff about turnover and the role they can play in working with their coworkers to help them improve. When someone leaves who worked with them, workers tend to think, "What is wrong with the company that my coworker(s) are leaving?" Yet when new staff come on board, I have yet to hear someone say, "Tell me how horrible it was at your last company and why you had to get out of there."

Managers don't broadcast when they give employees subpar reviews because it wouldn't be fair to the employee. However, when an employee is terminated, I often hear other employees saying, "Did they know it was coming?"

As workers, as managers, as contributors to a company, we always have to look at what our relationship it with our company and how we are treated, what we give back and how we are made to feel. It is important that we then stand up for our feelings when coworkers wonder why someone has left rather than believe the negative perception that an employee was treated unfairly.

Good managers give their blood, sweat and tears to help their staff and their company grow. They do this for financial rewards yes, but also for a sense of career satisfaction, accomplishment and the belief that they have built and created something bigger than one person. To have that chipped away at because someone who didn't work out as an employee is a detriment to the work ethic and attitude of the good people within an organization.