How to attract and keep your best employees
A few weeks ago, I created a survey on LinkedIn, asking what non-monetary incentives would attract folks to a new employer or keep them at their current employer.
Our firm interviews thousands of candidates per year, and in a post-covid world, one of the most common questions we’ve received has been “Is the role remote?”
Armed with this information and having read many articles about the topic of remote work, I assumed most people would say that fully remote work was at the top of their priority list when evaluating companies.
To my surprise, however, employees valued a flexible work schedule over fully remote work.
What does this mean for you as a leader? Here are a few of my thoughts:
If you’re in the manufacturing business and your people need to be in the office or on the floor to get their jobs done, you can still compete for top talent
A flexible work schedule can be interpreted as many things, of course, but think of it this way: if you can give your associates some latitude in their schedules and communicate that in interviews, you’ll have a greater likelihood of landing strong candidates
Think of a flexible work schedule in this way: if an employee needs to drop off his daughter at school 3 days a week and he arrives 30 minutes late on those days, do your best to have your managers work something out with that person
Trust your employees to accomplish their tasks. If you don’t trust them, you should consider changing one of two things: your management approach, or your people
Remote work is still very popular, of course, and that can’t be denied
You and your leadership team should address strategies to attract and retain your people. Don’t delay—the stakes are too critical.