What Defines an Employer of Choice?
Looking for a point of difference? Look to your team! Employers who gain a reputation as valuing their employees can establish key points of difference to their competitors. But what makes an ‘employer of choice?’ Strategy.
To ensure identification, attraction and retention of key people, organisations should have in place a recruitment and retention strategy. This strategy needs to identify measurable recruitment objectives and establish how the company can differentiate themselves from other employers.
Being aware of your staff turnover is a key measure. Different businesses and industries will have different average lengths of employment but the most important measure is keeping the right people. If a business is not asking its current employees ‘what makes you stay?’, then it needs to re-evaluate its retention strategies.
Another measure of whether an organisation is successful as an employer of choice is the time and cost associated with filling staff vacancies. Tracking this information over time, performing exit interviews to ascertain why people leave an organisation and asking long-serving employees why they remain, reveals a collection of data that can then be used in staff retention planning.
An Opportunity to Advance
Professional development opportunities through on-the-job or subsidised accredited training as well as a defined career path for your employees shows commitment to staff and encourages loyalty. Allowing the opportunity to demonstrate new skills and learning, either through promotion or with more responsibility, shows dedication to continued excellence while empowering and providing job satisfaction for your employee.
To determine whether your company offers appropriate career opportunities for staff, look at the number of promotions made internally over a certain period (eg 5 years) and review annual performance reviews for individual staff to ensure your end of the bargain has been kept from prior reviews.
Staff Incentives
Who said money isn’t everything? Bonuses, profit share schemes and other monetary incentives are ways to demonstrate that staff are valued by the company. Setting yourself apart from competitors by offering competitive salaries and financial reward is a major differentiation in being an employer of choice.
Work/life balance
It’s true that very few people will get to their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time at the office and work/life balance is perhaps one of the most essential ingredients to being an employer of choice.
Creating work/life balance for your employees includes providing flexible work policies to cater to employees’ family commitments, their health and introducing wellness initiatives such as gym facilities and employee assistance programs – right through to being able to leave work at a reasonable hour each day.
Being an ‘Employer of Choice’ is an intangible term but for the benefits of retaining skilled staff, having a productive team and maintaining a competitive edge, it is something all businesses would do well to strive for.
For more information go to: www.nortecltd.com.au
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Michelle Dowding, NORTEC Employment and Training Ltd
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