Employee Life Cycle

What I will concentrate on are:

You need a good employment brand. This boils down to recognition and clarity. When your company name is mentioned to a prospective employee, what do they say? A good employment brand usually means that the person will say:

 

                “I understand what this company does, it does….”

                “It would be a good place for me to work because….”

 

Every time a company shows itself to the employment market, it must ensure that these questions are answered effectively and consistently. 

 

For most employers and in particular small employers, the key to this is their website. I often look at websites and see a confusing array of material when you click the ‘come and work for us button’. You need to keep this simple, remember the average person who is browsing on a website is only on for two minutes. Make sure when they click the’ recruitment box’, that you instantly answer these two critical questions up front. 

 

Another vital aspect is  avoiding a negative employment brand, particularly for employers who operate in small towns or regional centres. It only takes a small number of employees who have had a bad experience, to start to create a strong barrier to your employment brand’s success. 

 

I recently stumbled on a Facebook page where potential university graduates were discussing in great detail their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with graduate offerings from major companies in Australia. It surprised me how some of the negative responses went viral across many university campuses in the space of a few days’. 

 

Turning to the concept of retention, I did some detailed research a few years ago looking at key regional business operations that were struggling to attract labour; frankly any labour at all. The study got down to a very granular level and we found a very interesting thing, leaving aside the people who stream into the CBD each morning, most employees, especially blue collar employees, only travel between 40-60 minutes to work each morning (a little longer in country areas). This means that your business operates in a localised employment market; so draw a circle around your business operation and most of your employees will live within that travelling radius. What the research found was that businesses needed to understand who they were competing against for labour within this localised employment market and why employees chose them or their competitors.

 

Again reflecting on research undertaken at the height of the last mining boom (2007), I found that the majority of employees resigning (choosing to leave employment) in the first five years of employment did so in the first 18 months; that is they joined, had a look and left.   My immediate reaction was that this was the Gen Y factor but the demographics of the employees did not support this.


 

If you want to capture employees early, you need to think about:

HR types call this “on-boarding” – not only will it get you through those sticky first 18 months but it will get your employees up and running and being effective contributors much faster. 

 

Turning to performance, my final point is that employees in high performing companies will nearly always say yes to the following two questions:

If I was to ask your employees these questions, what would they say? 

Nigel Ward
CEO + Director, Australian Business Lawyers & Advisors
nigel.ward@ablawyers.com.au

 

This is for information purposes only.  It does not purport to be comprehensive or to render legal advice.