Captivating and engaging talent: here’s how to do it
The supply side of talent is shrinking, the aging population continues. As a growing organization, you need bright minds, added value seekers and vision wideners who help determine the direction and who can easily adapt. But convincing these bright minds that they can help map out the strategic route is no longer enough. Your newly recruited talents are bombarded with tempting offers. Retaining them is no longer something to take for granted. Through retention management, as an employer you can increase the involvement and commitment of your employees. With five action axes, we will give you the tools to attract and retain young talent in your organization.
What is retention management?
Recruiting talent is one thing, retaining talent is another. As an employer, it takes you an enormous amount of time to find and engage newcomers. By increasing retention rates and reaping on the efforts of new talent, you reduce costs and ensure long-term succession in the organization. Employees who help build your organizations year after year are the ambassadors who may attract other talent with their enthusiasm and loyalty.
Therefore, create an environment where talents can develop and where they enjoy being. Give sufficient attention to a positive and strong company culture and make involvement and commitment a priority. You will see: there will be less turnover, making your company stronger in the changing business world.
Promote involvement and engagement of young talent
For more than 25 years, we at Ormit Talent have been connecting young talent with companies. This has allowed us to observe different needs and experiment with actions. Using the feedback we received in exit interviews, patterns that emerged from coaching and satisfaction scores from trainees, we formed a model. This model consists of 5 drives that serve as a guideline when setting up programs and guiding organizations to retain talent.
With these five action axes, you can now concretize your efforts to bind young talent to your organization.
1
Interest and inspiration
Employees want to feel connected to an organization, its mission, vision, culture, and values. How you position yourself and communicate about this is extremely important. As a company, be able to tell your story and inspire others with it. Young professionals show strong loyalty to employers who prioritize important social issues. Some examples include sustainability, direct social impact, health and unemployment.
As an employer, also create a corporate culture that closely aligns with the values, mission and goals that come first. Choose a long-term vision that, through the corporate culture, gives direction to a tangible goal that your talent is working toward. On top of that, engage managers to make that goal tangible through the values that come first. In this way, they are a source of inspiration for young talents and it becomes possible to build steadfast teams.
2
Contribution and impact
Committed employees need to know what makes their work worthwhile. Reach out to young professionals with meaningful projects and challenges and show that they are doing good work. Listen and stay involved, but give them room to make their own mark on an important decision. Make it clear that their efforts have a positive impact on the success of their team and the company as a whole. Only then will your talent feel like a unique and important part of your company.
3
Relationship and appreciation
A good relationship between employees is essential. Relationships play an important role in the engagement of young talents. Positive, informal relationships create a climate of safety and trust. Give young professionals a pat on the back from time to time, as well as constructive feedback when difficult situations arise. Friendship and trust in a team, ultimately contribute to commitment and job happiness.
In addition, adequately value the pay package of young professionals. It is an explicit way to reward effort, but not an intrinsic motivation to get the work done. It can even demotivate young talent when the salary package does not match expectations.
4
Individual motivators
Each team member is an individual in its own right that determines its own direction. Some are more motivated by the financial and growth opportunities, whereas others want above all to learn in an environment where they feel safe. Engage with your employees to find out what motivates them. These are the primary motivators of talent: the need to perform, intellectual challenge, autonomy, power, recognition, safety & security, self-actualization, a link to a higher purpose, learning, entrepreneurship, and a sense of belonging.
Bring sufficient empathy and understanding to what drives your team members. If necessary, offer career coaching if your talent themselves are not clear on what drives them. That way, it will be easier to discover and champion your employees’ aspirations.
5
Opportunities
Security is necessary when confidence is low, but pushing employees beyond the edge of their comfort zone leads to real growth. So be sure to offer young talents plenty of variety in their roles. Give them small opportunities such as participating in a project with experienced colleagues or give them bigger opportunities where they step out of their comfort zone. Only then will they put their skills to the test and have the feeling of real opportunity.
In addition, companies that make it easy for their talent to be able to sniff around for a new role within their organization also retain talent longer. With a company policy where someone is only allowed to change internal roles after 3 years, you may have lost someone ambitious people after only 2 years because they were triggered elsewhere. As an organization, strike a balance between being flexible towards internal mobility and the extra effort it requires from teams to make this happen.
Some key takeaways
Retaining young talent is just like satisfying customers. They are not satisfied until they feel that your company is meeting their wants and needs. It’s the same with talents. So:
- Create a corporate culture that pursues a tangible goal and matches the values and norms of ambitious talents.
- Reach out to young professionals plenty of opportunities to make an impact.
- Value the work they do for you.
- Give sufficient attention to personal motivations.
- Provide opportunities that test and expand their skills.
Do you manage to keep those young talents happy just like your clients? Then we are sure that those talents will continue to determine the path of your company in the future.
No inspiration on how to turn these 5 axes into concrete actions?