Recruitment tips: Winning the war for talent

Juni Kuntari, Senior Manager, Accenture

Companies everywhere are struggling to hold on to their most valuable employees. The war for talent can be won with new programs that combine competitive compensation with better communication, a wide range of personal growth opportunities and a clearer articulation of standards and expectations.

But businesses are aware too of the direct costs related to recruiting, hiring and training new employees.

Bringing the cost issue front and center to illuminate two points: 1. Retention is just as strategically important as recruitment. Not only is such turnover extremely costly in monetary terms; in the great majority of cases, when talent leaves a company, they join a competitor. Retaining a base of skilled and motivated employees is a critical factor to success. 2. It is also more important than ever to hire the right people with the right skills for any job.

The cost of training the best, smartest and most qualified recruits is probably significantly lower than the cost of training the average new hire - especially when you factor in the revenue being lost while workers are spending their time getting up to speed.

So what is the answer to the retention dilemma? How do companies keep more of their star performers, and keep these individuals engaged and motivated longer?

Organizational successes are dependent upon the quality, skills and motivation of the workers. Organizations should try to win the war for talent that goes beyond direct and indirect cost savings.

Better people produce better results. Faster people encourage faster organizational growth. Smarter people build organizations. For this reason, attracting, developing and retaining a skilled workforce has become a strategic imperative.

Employees today are more demanding than ever, they need not only terms of compensation, signing bonuses and equity stakes in the company, but overall job satisfaction. They want to learn new skills. They want to be given independence in there area of expertise and more control over their career development.

If these criteria aren't met, the best employees will leave and the best recruits will turn away.

Organizations can achieve bottom line benefits through implementation of comprehensive talent attraction, development and retention programs. An example might comprise the following components, tailored for a business' unique needs:

1. Benchmarked measures of performance through developing and applying realistic goals and metrics as well as mechanisms for timely and comprehensive performance feedback.

2. World-class recruitment, selection and workforce planning processes to reduce hiring and administrative costs, improve the quality of new hires and ensure right jobs.

3. E-enabled capabilities, such as eRecruitment and eLearning to reduce the time, cost and effort traditionally needed to acquire new talent, while improving the speed, quality and effectiveness of talent management functions. Similarly, eLearning can dramatically improve organizational performance by providing learning opportunities for workers that are easily accessible and align to their career development goals and business strategy.

4. Sophisticated performance management processes to align rewards with desirable behaviors and successes can motivate employees and improve their overall job satisfaction.

5. Organizational/design and infrastructure that supports the solutions outlined above and knowledge management infrastructure that enables enterprise-wide collaboration and sharing of relevant information are important components to winning the war for talent.

So the way to win is not through the game of escalating salaries. That is little like an arms race: expensive and, ultimately, difficult-if not impossible-to win. Research has uncovered several common traits among companies that have been able to actually buck the turnover trend and not only keep their talented employees but also motivate them and improve their performance.