Retaining Top Talent With Non-Monetary Rewards Part 1

As a recruiter for almost thirty years, I have interviewed and spoken with thousands of candidates.  More often than not, compensation isn’t the reason we are able to get them interested in a new opportunity. Most of the time compensation is a secondary concern. In fact, both myself and my partner, Barry Deutsch, have a long standing policy that if compensation is the issue, we will not work with them.

With our candidates, their primary concern is focused on non-monetary issues. Most of the time it evolves around their boss or the company. This is not to say compensation isn’t important to them, but it isn’t the primary motivator to listen to a recruiter.

The reverse is also true. When potential candidates decide not to listen to a potential opportunity, it usually isn’t because they feel they are overpaid and that no other company will pay them as much. Rather it is generally that they have a great relationship with their boss and love working at the company.

After listening to so many potential candidates turn us down because they were so happy working where they are, we have come up with 7 things  these companies consistently do to create a culture that retains their talent. You don’t have to do all of these, but if you aren’t doing any of them you might want to reconsider.

1) Verbal Praise - These companies give what we call, “Standing Ovations” for outstanding performance. They take the time to recognize when someone goes above and beyond the call of duty. They also give praise  or even a simple thanks when someone does a good job. This is sincere praise and thanks, not just given as a matter of fact.  The contrast is a culture in which the employee’s performance  is viewed as, “just doing their job” or “isn’t that what we pay them to do.”

2) Achievement Awards – Another form of praise. These achievement awards are earned. It is not about sooner or later everyone will get one, so everybody feels good. That loses all of their meaning and significance. These awards take different forms in different companies. Some examples include a reserved parking space, employee of the month, a trophy prominently displayed in the person’s office, certificates, mention in the company newsletter, a pin handed out by the CEO, lunch with the CEO and executive team, take a break and cake on Friday afternoon, etc.  The important point is that the employees appreciate the recognition and don’t take it for granted.

3)  Learning and Development – Top performers want to continue to learn and develop their skills. Does your company encourage on-going learning for your employees? This might include giving them some time off to attend classes, bringing a topic expert in to speak to a group, allowing them to attend a workshop, have an on-line training program they can complete, or encouraging involvement in professional association and trade associations. These types of programs generally don’t take a lot of time or can be performed outside of working hours and the ROI to the company can be huge.

4) Fun and Recreational Events – My daughter works for a private university. They recognize that they don’t pay at the industry level. They overcome this in many ways, but one way is that either her department or the administrative team will do some fun thing that takes an hour or two. Some examples include, a putting contest in the office, a picnic at the park for lunch,one time her department took off an hour early to go see the filming of the Tonight Show, they went bowling during lunch time, they will take a few minutes late in the day and play a game of charades or Pictionary, etc. These are just fun things that make it a great place to work. To the workers this is worth making a few dollars less because they enjoy the people and their efforts are recognized.

Part 2 will cover the final three non-monetary rewards you can do to retain your best talent.

A free audio recording from our radio show that discusses these in more detail is available on our Web site. CLICK HERE to download a copy.

Join our LinkedIn Group, Hiring and Retaining Talent for additional discussions and articles. CLICK HERE to join.

If this article was helpful to you, please pass it on to others so they can also benefit. I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad Remillard

Letting Employees Go Is A PR Event

Most have heard that hiring is a PR event. You should make sure that, whether you hire the person or not, they leave your company wishing they got the job. That way, they will speak highly of your company to others that might want to work there. This is especially true in small industries and communities where everybody knows everybody else.

The last thing you want is people telling future potential employees how bad the company or hiring manager was when they interviewed and that they would never work for that hiring manager or company.

Not good PR if you plan on attracting top talent to your company. In fact, a great way to ensure top talent will work for your competitors.

I don’t think some (not all) companies or managers recognize the same principles apply when laying people off or even firing them.

Well they do, and I can  demonstrate this, because I recently encountered bad PR. Twice.

First example

I was recruiting for a Regional Director of Sales in the upper northeast. Because of the weather, it isn’t easy to relocate people there.  The company was in a very niche industry, and because it was a senior level sales job, industry experience was important.

It didn’t take long before trouble set in. Did I mention the reason for the opening was that the previous person was fired? Apparently, the manner in which the person’s boss fired him was at best inappropriate and at worst down right wrong and disrespectful.

The fired employee had spread the word about his treatment all around, stating what a jerk this person was to work for and how he badly he treated people. He also took the time to go into great detail about how he was fired. Now, what I heard when I tried to recruit people was, “I’m open to talking as long as it isn’t for X company working for X?” WOW, what a way to start a search in a small industry in a small geographical area.

This all happened because the VP didn’t see firing as a PR event. The best way to fire someone is to make them think you are doing them a favor, not by degrading them, surprising them, or throwing them out of the building. This VP took a bad situation (firing someone) and made it worse by the manner in which he did it. If the VP had done it correctly, he would have still reached his goal of letting the person go, but he also could have set himself up as a person that cares and people want to work for.

Second example

I live in Orange County, California. Most people think it is part of Los Angeles. It isn’t. For such a large area, it is actually its own community. Large enough to get lost, but small enough that people get to know people. There are so many networking groups that it is literally hard to plan an event because the first thing that comes up is, you know XYZ networking group meets then. At almost any time day and night, every day of the week, some group is getting together. Some groups have attendance in the hundreds and some have less. Regardless, there are a lot and this is how people get to know people in Orange County, California.

At a recent event I noticed a lot of people were saying, “Did you hear about ABC Company and how they did the RIF?”  RIF stands for reduction in force, or in plain English laid people off.  This was the buzz while people were standing around talking before the meeting started. Apparently, some of the people that got laid off were at the meeting and telling horror stories about how the company treated the employees they let go. Many of whom had been with the company for some time.

How many other meetings do you think these people attended in the next week and started telling the same stories? Not to mention all the people at the first meeting perpetuating the stories to their network, colleagues, friends and family. We used to say, this is how rumors start. Now we say this story is going viral. It won’t be long before this company’s reputation precedes them. When the economy shifts, and they need to hire people, it will not be easy.

All because they didn’t think of letting people go as a PR event. An event that impacts the company’s reputation and how it is viewed in its industry and community.

If you found this helpful, please forward it on to others so they will be helped. You can email it to your team, forward it to your network, post on Linkedin or company Web site. Let’s help everyone build teams of top talent.

You can join our Linkedin Hiring and Retaining Top Talent group where there is a lot more information on this and many other topics. There are also discussions and on-line articles. CLICK HERE to join and participate.

Our 8 Point Hiring Process Assessment Scorecard is available to download for free. Try taking this and learning if your hiring process is designed to attract, hire and retain top talent. CLICK HERE to download your scorecard.

I welcome your thoughts, comments and questions.

Brad Remillard

Cost Per Hire Versus Value Per Hire Which Is Most Important

The cost of a bad hire rarely impacts an organization, however, the value of a great hire can often transform an organization.

As executive recruiters, we hear about the “cost per hire” regularly. It seems like every time HR calls, this topic comes up. However, I would suggest that a far better discussion for HR to have is on the “value per hire.” Having this discussion not with recruiters, but with the CEO is a far more meaningful and beneficial discussion. It not only helps justify that HR contributes revenue and value to the organization, but it also brings HR in as a strategic partner.

This also goes for the CFO of the organization, who should work with HR to help determine a way to calculate the value of a hire.

A few years back I was sitting in the office of the VP HR when the CFO came by and stuck his head in to say hi. During the conversation he commented, “You know, over the last x years we have paid you over $300,000 for your services.” I think he was expecting me to be apologetic. I replied, “That is all? I completely agree with you that I have been grossly underpaid.” I don’t think this was the answer he was looking for. I continued, “Considering that you are now a millionaire, and the rest of the executive team I have placed here are also millionaires, and that the company went from $50 million in revenue to $250 million in revenue with a valuation close to $1 billion, I believe the fees I have been paid are justified by the value these people contributed to the company. Wouldn’t you agree?”

This isn’t about me. It is to demonstrate that even CFO’s don’t step back and recognize that for some expenses there is often a lot of value created for the company. If you de-humanize this concept, an employee is just another asset. Many often say the most “valuable asset” in the company. So, if employees are assets then shouldn’t the CFO be capable of calculating an ROI just like any other asset?.

Would this concept benefit HR as they justify the costs to acquire these assets? Isn’t it fair to look at both sides of the equation?

Employees are often described as “human capital” so some sort of return on capital doesn’t seem unrealistic. I’m not suggesting that the calculation is an easy one. I’m sure whoever first figured out how to calculate ROI had to tweak the formula more than once before getting it right, but just because it is difficult to calculate doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.

Defining success in the role before you hire a person is a good start. Our Success Factor Methodology recommends developing a job description that defines what great success is in this role. Basically, by the end of the first year what would this person have to have accomplished so that the hiring manager would consider this person not just a good hire, but a great hire. In our book, You’re NOT The Person I Hired, we refer to these as,  “Success Factors” (for some free examples of Success Factors for different positions  CLICK HERE). I believe this is the starting point in determining the value an employee brings to the company. Top talent in your company will hit these. The average will hit these some of the time and below average will rarely hit the success factors. Obviously, for different levels within the company the value added will change.

At least now the company is starting to look at the value a hire brings to the company and can start to assess the ROI.

To learn more about the Success Factor Methodology to help you attract, hire and retain top talent, check out our best selling book, You’re NOT The Person I Hired.

You can also begin implementing the Success Factory Methodology with our comprehensive hiring system. CLICK HERE to review.

I welcome your thoughts, comments and feedback.

Brad Remillard

Finding Top Talent in a Down Economy: It’s Still Hard Work

Just because the haystack is bigger, it doesn’t mean that there are more needles in it. There’s a misconception in the market now that finding good people is suddenly easy.

HR people, hiring managers, and the general public believe that when unemployment is high, recruiters just have to run an ad and tons of top-notch, unemployed candidates will flood your email box. Well, they are half right. The inbox does get flooded on occasion, but not with top quartile talent, and not with the candidate who has the specific accomplishments I need for my client’s position. Despite the high unemployment, the bell shaped curve hasn’t suddenly changed to create more top quartile talent. If anything, it’s harder to find the right talent for the position because there are so many more people looking.

Consider:
• When companies downsize, they don’t let their top performers go first. They let the average to below average players go first, so the pool of available talent out there consists of far more average players than top quartile players. If you want to hire top quartile players you have to have a process in place to find and attract them.

• The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. In general, it’s harder to get top candidates to change companies right now. With the economy still uncertain, the perceived risk of making a move increases. A top candidate may not be happy where they are, but unless you can provide a very compelling marketing statement about your company and your position, inertia will keep the candidate where they are.

• “Experience” does not equal qualified for your position. There really are a lot of experienced people out there, but just because they are experienced doesn’t mean they know how to do the specific things you need done. HR departments and hiring managers are easily blinded by a flood of resumes from “experienced” people, but experienced at what? Have they managed the switch from one Chinese ODM to another that you need done in the next three months? Have they opened new distribution channels in the EU? Just because they worked for a company that outsourced manufacturing to China, or sold into Europe, doesn’t mean they have done what you need accomplished.
In real estate, it’s “location, location, location”. In recruiting it’s “process, process, process”. If you don’t have a basic hiring process in place that every hiring manager understands and uses, the odds of making a bad hire increases significantly. The basics of a good hiring process are:

• Put the destination in the nav system. Create a job spec that defines, specifically, what needs to be accomplished in the next 12-18 months. Ask the question, “What does success look like for this position a year from now?” Spell it out and quantify it if possible.

• Don’t expect to catch a tuna in a trout pond. If you want to hire top quartile talent, you have to go after passive candidates, not just aggressive ones looking for a job. You will need a compelling marketing statement that will convince the top quartile candidate to look at your opportunity.

• Interviewing 101. Despite hiring being one of the most important processes in any company, few companies train their hiring managers on how to interview candidates. Learn the “who, what, where, when and why” of interviewing.

• Get on the same page. Your hiring team needs to agree on what you are all looking for in a candidate. What are the specific accomplishments you want in their background and what are the qualities that will predict future success for the candidate? If you’re not looking for the same things, you might as well be comparing apples, oranges and cherries.

Don’t let the glut of available people fool you. Recruiting top talent still takes a lot of work.

Mike Hagerthy

Join our Linkedin Hire and Retain Top Talent Discussion Group with 3200 participants and a vibrant discussion on everything related to job search

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Mike Hagerthy is an executive recruiter and President of  Hagerthy and Company in Southern California and a Certified Strategic Partner of IMPACT Hiring Solutions. To learn more about Hagerthy and Company CLICK HERE.

Why is your employee referral program a failure?

Why do most employee referral programs fail to achieve success?

Your employees are your greatest source of outstanding talent!

Why are they not whispering in the ears of their former co-workers, associates, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances who can deliver the results you need?

In over 25 years of executive search, hiring and sourcing consulting, and implementing hiring process improvements in thousands of companies, we’ve discovered a few key differences in why some programs work and others fail miserably. Here’s a list of the key reasons employee referral programs fail to live up to their potential:

• Financial incentives don’t work
• Most companies do a terrible job communicating about an opening
• Employees don’t trust their referrals will be handled in a professional manner
• Classic networking methods are not usually applied to employees

Let’s take each one of these in turn and dissect it over our next 4 blog posts.

However, before we jump into how to improve your employee referral program, let’s talk about metrics of success in employee referral programs. Most companies we’ve encountered achieve somewhere between 5% and 20% as a target range on number of candidates hired who came through an employee referral. I’m going to suggest that your target should be 50%.

Over the next 12 months, 50% of all hires should come from employee (modify this to be stakeholder) referrals. Some of my clients that I’ve worked with over the last quarter of century have continually refined their employee/stakeholder referral program to the point where 75% or more of all hires come from a referral.

Employee/Stakeholder Referrals are one of the main elements of our Success Factor Methodology in using Success-based Sourcing Methods. We dig into this subject in much more detail in our award-winning book, You’re NOT the Person I Hired. We’ve posted examples of using Compelling Marketing Statements in your referral program in our FREE Resources (we’ll talk more about creating a compelling reason for employees to make referrals in a subsequent post).

We’ve even created a FREE Assessment to judge the effectiveness of your sourcing methods, including employee referrals. If you would like to take the FREE Assessment, please complete the application form on our website and we’’ll show you how to quickly and inexpensively improve your referral program.

Once you really focus on implementing best practices in employee referrals, you’ll see that your quality of hires goes up, employee satisfaction goes up, employee performance goes up, recruiting costs go down, the costs of bad hires goes down, time to find and select a top performer goes down.

When should be the best time for you to implement best practices in an employee referral program?

What would you consider to be the primary best practice in your company that generates an abundance of employee/stakeholder referrals?

Barry

Your Reputation Impacts Hiring Top Talent

We were retained to conduct a search for a VP of Marketing . The position had been open for more than six months, during which time the company had interviewed ten people who showed little interest in the position or the company. In fact, one offer had been turned down. At first glance this seemed strange, since it was a good company offering reasonable compensation.

Shortly after contacting prospective candidates working for competitors and in related industries, the mystery became clear. The company had a reputation for high turnover, lack of innovative products, poor leadership and low pay. One candidate stated, “It’s known as a “burn ‘em and churn ‘em company.” Another candidate stated, “I’m interested in hearing about the position as long as it isn’t X company” of course it was X company. All of these issues had been true three years back, but new management had since come on and started changing things. The reputation, unfortunately, lagged behind.

In conjunction with the company we put together a marketing plan beginning with changing the Web site. We encouraged the company to address the baggage of the past while emphasizing the changes that had been made. The redesigned site also included testimonials from happy employees, information about the improved company benefits and management’s new commitment to employees. Another section discussed the company’s new products and how they were performing in the marketplace, as well as the company’s dedication to R&D. Finally, we changed how potential candidates were treated when they came in for interviews. All interviews were now viewed as a PR event.

As a result, even if a candidate didn’t end up getting the job, they still walked away with a completely different image of the company. Most walked away now wanting the job.

We ultimately filled the search with a candidate who originally told us she didn’t even want to interview. In fact, she told us the same thing three times before finally agreeing to an interview. She came away overwhelmed by the change and impressed with the new management. She was eager to go to work for the reborn organization.

Understanding your company’s reputation is an important issue when conducting a search. Regardless of your reputation, developing a compelling marketing plan is key to a successful search. Ensuring your company’s image is well received by candidates will help you attract more top candidates and reduce the cost per hire.

Start with your Web site, as this is the first place all candidates go once hearing the name of the company.

Remember all interviews are a PR event.

We offer a wealth of free resources and tools to help you attract, hire and retain top talent. To review these resources – Click here.

A sourcing check-up might just what your company needs. So click here to get one.