16 Ways to Attract and Retain Talent Since Covid-19

Your vision is to hire and retain employees as needed.

You always thought you would start your business, grow over time, and be prosperous with employees wanting to work for you. Did you ever stop to think what would happen in that chain of events if you weren’t able to attract or retain employees to help you? For most, it’s just a given that when you get large enough to hire, you just post an ad and people come running. However, that is not so much the case since Covid-19. What would happen to you today if your employees suddenly jumped on this bus they call ‘The Great Resignation’ and you lost a large portion?

Large retailers are cited as offering signing bonuses in the triple digits, free college tuition, and higher than normal wages. Small businesses cannot do this as easily and according to an NPR interview with Saxon Shoes, they estimate they will lose about 15% in sales this holiday season because of the worker shortage.

The topic for this article came up after reading an article about how Target decided to never be open again on Thanksgiving. Thinking further, is it really to be with families, or is it more about the labor shortage and inability to be open? That is quite a perk for retail employees to know that they can be home with their families on holidays. So I wanted to look further into other ideas that can help attract and retain talent right now.

What is 'The Great Resignation'?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that 4 million Americans quit jobs in July 2021. That same month there was a record-breaking breaking 10.9 million open jobs. This Harvard Business Review article gets into more detail as to why this is happening but for this article, it’s more about the staggering numbers and what you can do to stand out.

So what can you do to attract and retain talent?

This article is focused on low-cost to free ways to assist you in that challenge. Some may end up financially impactful, for example, reviewing market salaries, but for the most part, these aren’t going to impact in a major financial way. According to Qualtrics.com, if you hire a high performer and they excel at their job, they are up to 8 times more productive than the average! All the more reason to seriously consider the following points.

1. First and foremost, think about the personality of your brand

Is your brand connected to social issues? What is the ‘why’ for someone to work for your business? When someone new signs on, who and what are they signing on to? How are they going to talk about your company? The message has to be clear to your current employees, potential employees, and the people who are thinking about your organization. Is the ad for the job you recently posted communicating that message properly?

2. Benefits

This is another fairly basic or expected piece of the employment package. If you aren’t already offering insurance, 401k, paid time off, the ‘standard’ benefits you are going to want to look into doing that. Some companies go further and offer mental health care and pet insurance in addition.

As part of benefits, even if you are less than 50 employees strong, something that resembles the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) can be important to those new hires or current employees who expect to have a family and want to know they can do so and still come back to their job. Consider paid maternity and paternity leave if you are able to do so.

3. Review the market price of salaries and adjust where needed

According to theblancesmb.com, one of the most common mistakes in posting jobs is based on the budget rather than what is real. Things have changed in 2021 and a regular review for both new postings and existing employees is needed. Without getting into a lot of detail on this (see references) consumer prices are on the rise, and Social Security as an example has hit a 5.9% cost of living increase, which is the biggest jump in 40 years. CNBC cites wage growth was 4.2%, up from 3% for the last three months. So, that means that wage growth was up 1.2% over the .4% increase in inflation, so wages are actually moving a little higher as of the end of 2021.

4. Speed up the hiring

When you see someone you know is a good fit, you make an offer, it’s that simple. If you wait and drag your feet on paperwork, being on vacation, approvals, whatever else it may be, they’re gone.

5. Consider the burden of childcare

In February 2021, 57% of women 20 years and older were working, this is down from 59.2% the prior year. There are several thoughts on why this is down, but one of the more popular is the family demands on women related to child care and the closure of schools. According to bloomberg.com, a global study found that women spend 173 additional hours over men doing unpaid labor caring for kids in 2020, estimating $800 billion in lost income.

The point of this is that a way to attract workers with families, not just women, is to consider having some sort of childcare support program, whether it be vouchers toward it, resources, or assistance in locating childcare. This can be especially useful if you are an employer who hires people who relocate from another area.

6. Implement COVID safety

If workers are in fear of their health or the health of the ones they care about, you are always going to be a second or third priority. You can provide the basics and encourage social distancing, etc. It’s not enough though to just post signs about social distancing, and rules, you have to actually follow them. It’s certainly not going to win you any points to completely ignore the recommendations either. This is a perfect time to set aside your own biases about what is needed and follow expected standards that a person would expect to see in any workplace. Again, what if you were to lose the amazing group of employees you have by not providing a safe environment?

7. Consider their future

Will the interviewee be able to move up and/or take on additional responsibilities at some point? Ideally, there will be opportunities to learn new skills, the potential for promotion after a certain amount of time and accomplishment, etc. so make sure all of that is communicated. If you hire from within, that provides strong motivation so make sure to also communicate that. If you don’t hire within, think about what it would take to be able to do so. Make sure you have something in place to encourage growth and education, whether it’s a tuition reimbursement or lunch and learn type opportunities so that people don’t get stagnant. Tuition reimbursement can sound expensive, but with so many educational opportunities outside of traditional colleges, you could offer payment towards successfully completed courses through coursera.org or any other online platform where the cost is relatively cheap to the benefit.

In addition to offering coursework type of learning, you could implement a mentorship program. Try pairing senior executives with your high performers and encourage a culture of learning.

8. Incentive programs

This could be points or something like that for great performance. It may turn into cash when redeemed, or some other reward that would be of high interest to employees. It could be more vacation days, a retreat, etc. TripleLift is a company that offers a sabbatical with a $5,000 stipend after they reach the five year mark.

Additionally, you may want to consider an appreciation type of program. Employees need to be recognized when they do well which could be a reward or simply showing appreciation. A simple thank you goes a long way. Highlighting and recognizing the work well done can cut down significantly on turnover.

9. Profit-sharing

What better way to attract people, but also to motivate the ones who already work for you? Of course, they will want to share in the success of the company. You can easily tie company goals and company mission to daily activities but especially if you are offering profit sharing. This encourages a team mentality.

10. Consider new and innovative ways to offer bonuses through cryptocurrency

This would have to be optional and you have to check state laws first, but it is something to consider if you are looking to attract workers and position yourself as a forward-thinking organization.

11. Signing bonus

You want to avoid someone getting paid to begin working for you and then leaving after a few weeks of course, so think about the value of the bonus along with the time required to work for employees to receive it. According to cielotalent.com, 20% of turnover happens within the first 45 days, as 90% of employees decide in the first 6 months whether they will stay or leave. Intuit.com notes that a signing bonus could be 10% or more of salary if the position is in the entry to mid-level but it’s important to do some research depending on the position to ensure it’s competitive.

12. Refer-a-friend bonus

This is commonly in the $500 to $1,000 range, depending on the type of job role being recruited. This gives current employees the chance to join others to work for a culture they support, but you also get more insight into the hiring versus having to rely on unknown references. This can be a win-win but again, usually there is a 90-day window or some other arrangement of the time period for the person to work for you before paying the employee who referred the person.

13. Work-life balance and flexibility

You are likely in a situation like most businesses, where some or all of your employees buckled down and kept your business running in 2020 remotely. Keep the stress down and keep productivity up with the continuation of work from home. An extreme of anything is generally never good, but a healthy mix benefits all. Take into account current employees' and potential employees' opinions in this new hybrid approach where some days are on-site and some off-site.

Focus on the work completed, and not the location. These great people you are attracting and working to retain should be trusted to complete their job. If not, you have a whole separate issue to deal with and likely has nothing to do with working remotely but instead communication barriers, availability and expectations not being set. We are in times where you have to change your mindset and let go of the old to continue being successful.

Consider offering alternative schedules. This could be working 4, 10 hour days some weeks, and flextime options. I’ve seen core time be successful with flextime where you set hours of say 9 am to 3 pm and all schedules have to accommodate those hours so that meetings can be scheduled and collaboration can happen. Flextime can be worked around that core time you set. If you don’t have issues with collaboration, you may not need a core time set up.

14. Encourage healthy behavior

If you’re a small business, an on-site gym is unlikely, however, you may offer a stipend towards a gym membership, or periodic opportunity for massage, whether on-site or a voucher for off-site. You’re helping other local businesses out by doing this, so there could be some promotional opportunity, but most importantly, you are offering perks to your employees. Perks that assist in reducing stress, which in turn, increases productivity.

15. Floating holidays

Let’s say you give ten holidays to employees each year but on some of those holidays, you need a handful of people working to keep operations going. One solution is floating holidays. Let’s use Black Friday as an example. Many businesses are open that you need to continue supporting. So, you ask three employees out of the 25 to work Black Friday and in exchange, those 3 employees can choose an alternative day off. You may specify it has to be within that month or year but they get the benefit of a day off when they really need it, and you have your company running without interruption. This takes the stress off of employees of losing out on holidays and provides a win-win. Many younger employees aren’t just worried about being paid to work holidays, they want the time spent with family and a day off gives them the chance to be with the kids on a summer day at the beach.

16. Job sharing

Job sharing is what would be a full-time position for one person and it's instead split into two part-time jobs. Their schedules can be arranged to cover the position needs, you get the benefit of brainstorming where you have two heads contributing, and this offers flexibility to the employees. However, it’s not the easiest to find partners who work well together, the communication can be a challenge and the workers will likely have less opportunity for promotion.

In summary, whether you have great employees, or are in search of great ones, these ideas for attracting and retaining have proven to be successful during this challenging time and I encourage you to start small and implement where you can.

Written by Nicole Hullihen, November 28th, 2021

Recommended references to read more about attracting and retaining talent in 2021 and 2022

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/27/1058344464/jobs-small-business-holiday-shopping

https://hbr.org/2021/06/attracting-talent-during-a-worker-shortage

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-ways-to-attract-quality-employees-2948197

https://www.cielotalent.com/insights/talent-magnetism-how-to-attract-and-retain-top-talent-to-your-organization/

https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/employee/how-can-you-attract-top-talent/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/01/heres-how-inflation-may-impact-raises-this-year.html

https://news.gallup.com/poll/330533/working-women-fared-during-pandemic.aspx

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-25/women-did-three-times-as-much-unpaid-child-care-as-men-during-covid-pandemic

https://mint.intuit.com/blog/salary/how-to-ask-for-a-signing-bonus/

https://hr.duke.edu/benefits/family-friendly/flexible-work-options/job-sharing