Employee recruiting and retention. What's hot right now? What's working? If you're like the over 1,300 respondents of HR Daily Advisor's recruiting survey, then you likely use online recruiting and employee referrals as your main recruiting methods, and value "fair, respectful treatment” as the most important factor for employee retention.
Here's a look at what employee recruiting and retention strategy trends their annual survey identified for 2013.
How do your strategies stack up?
Do You Have a Formal Recruiting Strategy?
Of those surveyed, 60.5% of participants have a recruiting strategy, though only 29% have written documentation.
How Do You Recruit Employees?
When asked which methods are used to recruit for open positions, online and employee referral were the most popular ways.
- Online recruiting (80%)
- Employee referral (75%)
- Newspaper ads (44%)
- Employment agencies/headhunters (40%)
- Staffing firms/temp agencies (39%)
- Job fairs (38.5%)
What's Negotiable?
When it comes down to making an offer, the survey asked about what benefits are negotiable.
According to the survey, negotiating the salary on every position is the norm for 17%, and negotiating the salary for certain positions is the norm for 71%. For 10% of survey participants, a candidate takes what is offered or the job goes to the next candidate in line.
With benefits, over half (54%) of the survey participants said they are willing to negotiate paid time off (PTO) and 45% said hours of work were negotiable (Chart source HR Daily Advisor).
How Do You Manage Employee On-Boarding?
The survey found that 89% have a formalized on-boarding program for new employees.
Who participates in on-boarding? For 75% of respondents, Management team members are involved.
What’s Working for Retention?
The survey also asked about employee retention. Based on survey results, HR Daily Advisor summarized these ten retention tips and trends:
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Making hiring decisions based on diversity and soft skills as well as experience/expertise.
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Clearly communicating your expectations and always expecting excellence.
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Adequately preparing new employees. Then ensuring all employees continue to have the training and tools they need to do their job excellently.
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Trusting your employees. Allowing them to make some mistakes. Encouraging them to be accountable and to learn from their experiences.
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Recognizing each person has different supervision needs and providing supervision only to the level each individual needs, but monitoring performance.
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Catching employees doing things right. Chatting with employees frequently. Providing positive feedback adequate to that individual’s needs. Encouraging employees to identify and provide their own constructive feedback but don’t hesitate to provide it yourself if necessary.
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Leading by example. Without exception, show only the behaviors you want your employees to display.
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Encouraging individualism within the boundaries of respect and consideration.
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Looking for daily opportunities for transparency. Don’t keep unnecessary secrets.
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Terminating quickly if an employee proves untrustworthy and unsalvageable.
Click here to read the full results of HR Daily Advisor's employee recruiting and retention survey.
Download our employee retention eBook to learn how to keep your most valued employees without breaking your budget.
What strategies is your small biz implementing to recruit and retain great employees? Do you have a formal program? Join the discussion with a comment below.
