How to retain employees in a candidate-led market?

Written by Amy O'Hanlon - HR Management Lecturer at UCD Professional Academy

While there has been a lot of conversation on ‘the Great Resignation’ in recent years, the real issue for Irish employers right now is ‘how do we become great at retention?

According to IBEC’s Workplace Trends and Insights HR Report 2022, the three main areas of importance for organisations in 2023 are retention of employees (69%), followed by employee engagement (57%), followed by attracting the right employees (49%).

So as opposed to looking at why people are leaving us, let’s focus on what we can do to ensure they stay.

Ensuring people stay with us and most importantly want to stay with us comes down to how they are treated. Are we treating people like adults? Do we show them that we respect and value them through everything we do? The employment relationship is like any relationship. When we’re treated well and feel valued we’ll be more committed to that relationship. And the more committed we are the less likely we are to leave because we want to stay. 

Retention as a strategy isn’t something that exists in isolation - and it’s not something we only need to consider once someone has been with us for some time. The retention strategy starts before that person even joins your business. It starts with candidate retention and the candidate experience.

The Candidate Experience

How many of us have been left in limbo waiting to hear back from a prospective employer after having been interviewed? Or have had a horrendous experience at an interview or during a selection process? 

In this market, candidate retention is a key concern. I consistently hear stories from my students, who work in organisations of all sizes and sectors, of being ‘ghosted’ by candidates and candidates ‘no-shows’ at interviews would appear anecdotally to be on the increase. 

So how can we give our candidates such a great experience that they’ll be truly inspired to work with us? That the thought of ‘standing us up’ isn’t even a factor? 

Again it comes back to treating people with respect. And it requires a fundamental shift in mindset. We need to stop thinking of candidates as applicants and start thinking of them as customers. Would we leave a customer in limbo waiting for a response or a follow-up call? Would we meet with a customer and wait several weeks or even months before reaching out to them again? No. 

Change our Mindset from Candidate to ‘Customer’

A great customer – and candidate – experience essentially is driven by great communication. Talent acquisition specialists are often challenged for time but it’s short-term gain for long-term pain when we don’t do people the courtesy of acknowledging applications, regretting candidates who are not successful after each stage of the process or offering candidates the opportunity to ask for feedback.

But the responsibility for the candidate experience doesn’t just sit with recruiters. It sits just as equally and even more importantly with hiring managers. After all, we get one chance at first impressions.

Have you ever sat across the table from a prospective manager and began to see red flags in terms of how you’re being spoken to or treated? Have you asked yourself ‘If this is how I’m being treated as a candidate, what does that say for how I’ll be treated as an employee?’ or ‘I was excited about the opportunity to work for this company but I couldn’t possibly take the risk of working with someone whose treated or spoken to me like that’? I have.

A survey of 1,000 employees from various industries completed by Career Addict, found that 79% consider bad leadership as a factor in deciding to quit their role. On the other hand, four in ten said they would return to their previous role if their former managers were replaced!

In the same way, in this market where candidates have a huge amount of choices, they will only join a business if they feel confident that they can build a strong relationship with that manager. Remember – this is no longer only about the employer assessing the suitability of a candidate and asking ‘What can you do for us?’ Candidates are asking themselves ‘Do I want to work for you?’

Being ‘Consciously Conscious’

So we need to educate our managers on their role in creating a great candidate experience. We start with the basics – what not to say or do and most importantly what type of behaviour, language or questions could be deemed discriminatory and non-inclusive.

The Employment Equality Act or the ‘9 Grounds’ as we sometimes refer to it in HR circles gives us a very clear line of sight on questions, comments or other behaviour that could be perceived as discriminatory. It’s important to take our hiring managers through this in advance of any recruitment campaign. 

The second element our hiring managers need upskilling, education and coaching on is unconscious bias. We’ve all heard the mantra ‘interviewers make up their minds in the first few minutes’. That is unfortunately very accurate. What’s happening is that our brain makes an unconscious ‘judgement’ or forms an impression of a candidate based on our own personal experiences, upbringing and social and cultural norms. This is a normal human response which unfortunately we can’t control. What we can control however is what we do with that thought process. And while we can’t stop it from happening, we can stop it from leading us to make decisions which are subjective and biased. 

So we need to become ‘Consciously Conscious’. Are we guilty of ‘recruiting in our own image’ – otherwise known as affinity bias. Or do we make assumptions about someone’s ability based on their age or other characteristics? So let’s ensure that both ourselves and our hiring managers become consciously aware of this through education and holding each other accountable for anything which feels less than fair. 

Communication is Key

The third and most important factor in creating a great candidate experience is undoubtedly communication. Like we said earlier, how many of us have been left in limbo waiting to hear back from an employer on our application? Or worse, have been through a lengthy recruitment and selection process only to be suddenly ghosted by a company? 

So we need to be in constant communication with our candidates. The usual blocker I hear to this is that we simply don’t have the time to get back to everyone. Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest mistakes we can make in talent acquisition. So we need to find a way either by investing in candidate relationship management software or sending an old-school bcc email to all candidates. It’s a basic courtesy and goes a long way in setting you apart from the competition. A survey by recruiting platform iCIMS found that candidates will open approx 18% of emails from recruiters but will open 99% of texts and will respond within an average of 12 minutes.

And if we’re looking to make a business case for why we should focus and invest in creating a great candidate experience then the following stats speak for themselves. A survey by Talentlfyt found that 95% of candidates are more likely to apply again to us after having a positive candidate experience, even if they were unsuccessful, and 98% of candidates who have had a great experience will refer other candidates to us. So not only does this cost us nothing from a time and spend perspective, but it’s great news for our employer brand. And if decision makers and those who hold the purse strings still aren’t convinced, then the same report revealed that 88% of candidates are more likely to use our company in the future as consumers if they’ve felt valued and treated with respect during the recruitment process. 

The Pre-Joiner Experience

Now that we’ve invested in creating a great experience for our candidates, let’s ensure that we continue this post offer. One month’s notice period is the norm for most candidates but this may extend up to three months in some cases. In this market, that’s a long time between someone accepting an offer and joining us. Having spent the first eight years of my career as a recruiter, I found this to be the riskiest time from a candidate retention standpoint. 

Unless we continue that great experience by remaining in regular contact and keeping our new joiner ‘warm’, as we say in talent acquisition, a competitor may likely swoop in with an offer. We can significantly reduce the risk of our new joiners being poached if we continue to make them feel valued so that they start to feel like part of the team before they even start. 

Sending out a welcome pack to a new joiner with a branded product, if possible, or even a bunch of flowers or a small gift alongside a card written by the hiring manager and with welcome notes included from each of the team is sending a clear message that we are excited about welcoming you to our team and look forward to getting to know you. 

Scheduling either a Zoom call with the new joiner and the team or better still a welcome lunch during that month’s notice period is again a great way to start building social bonds within the team. It also allays a lot of the anxieties we all feel as the ‘newbie’ by getting a lot of the first day ‘getting to know you’ stuff out of the way. 

The more we can create and build on a great candidate experience and first impressions with talent the better chance we stand of setting ourselves apart from the competition. We know that people crave experience and a sense of belonging more than material things more than ever before. So, let’s focus on winning the war for talent retention by bringing it back to basics – treat talent with dignity and respect, make candidates feel valued and get them excited about joining us!