Attracting, Retaining & Engaging Your Staff

An 'employer of choice' organisation is recognised for treating its employees exceptionally well, creating opportunities, and instituting work/life policies and benefits on an organisation-wide basis to create an enjoyable and fulfilling employment experience.

It has been well-documented that employer of choice organisations with innovative programs that build workforce capability and commitment outperform their competitors in attraction, engagement, development and retention of their people.

In order of preference, recent surveys have found that employees rate their job satisfaction on the following factors: having a good manager; working on challenging and diverse projects/work; being rewarded and recognized for their work; learning and growing on the leading edge of technology, products, ideas and business; collaborative communication; having a degree of control, autonomy in their day - types of projects, dress, etc. Salary is of course important but rarely placed number one.

Whilst effective leadership, work/life balance and career development always figure prominently in an employee's wish list, an attractive salary package is the first and key step in attracting a quality candidate to your organisation.

Customers and clients should feel comfortable that they are being cared for, but let employees set the organisation's culture.

Silos are out! Share information and involvement across the organisation.

Removing obstacles and bureaucracy reduces frustration, which leads the way for employees to be more productive and career progressive. Finding employees with the right 'cultural fit', personality and attitudes is just as important as skills (and even moreso in the current tight candidate market).

Offer flexible hours, telecommuting, compressed working weeks, job-sharing, job rotation, reward and recognition programs, workplace massages, paid tuition, days off, sports days, casual Fridays etc.

Courtesy of shortlistonline.com.au and CareersMultiList