In a perfect world it would be easy for every business to find and recruit the right team without any issues. However, as we all know the world is not perfect and recruitment and retention is no exception, like most areas of business there is always some room for improvement. The strategy and approach to find and recruit the right people is vital to the ongoing success of any business. It is not an easy task and many businesses can find themselves a little frustrated that their recruitment efforts don’t yield the results they were looking for.

One of the main problems is not actually a lack of appropriate candidates but the approach and tactics used by businesses to reward and retain their current employees which can have a knock on effect to the recruitment process. By not taking employee engagement and retention seriously or not putting in place a genuine strategy employers are paying the price and losing key staff, starting the recruitment cycle again.

There are many risks to this approach; a few are listed below but the potential damage to brand and reputation though unhappy employees is hard to measure:

• The costs in recruiting replacement staff on both a temporary and permanent basis
• The skills, knowhow and knowledge of your previous employee is potentially lost
• The pressure on other team members to cover the workload while a replacement is found
• Potential disruptions to services, possibly a reduced level of customer service or new business leads
• The impact on the remaining members of the team, morale could have an impact across the business.

There are of course lots of legitimate reasons a business has a high staff turnover, however, it is important the business understands the reason why they are losing key employees, it is something the HR team need to research and review, some of this may be covered off by exit interviews, although many employees unless they are very unhappy find it difficult to be honest in these situation. Once some of the reasons have been established it is important to put in place a strategy to address them with current employees, often a “one approach fits” all won’t be enough so it is important to treat your team as individuals and find out what is most important to them.

There are several strategies you can put in place to help address things moving forward:

Finding ‘the one’

It is important that you don’t recruit a new employee out of shear desperation to fill the role. It can be difficult if you have people breathing down your neck but it’s important for the long term that you stick to your guns. The candidate you’re looking for is out there, it’s about being prepared to put your recruitment strategy in place as soon as you find yourself short staffed, so you need to have your strategy ready to roll out before you have a staffing crisis. As part of the research for your strategy you need to highlight the best places to advertise the type of roles needed for your business, this will give you a real head start when someone leaves. There’s more information here on taking the risk out of recruitment.

Creating a pool of potential candidates

It’s advisable to have a candidate pool of previous applicants or new applicants from your job advertising strategy. You should have a good range of CVs to pick from to allow you to contact and invite people for interview. You should always be clear about your company, transparency from the outset is important to retained your key employees. If people find out the job or company culture is not what they were expecting they may soon want to leave and you’re back to square one.

So, now it is a case of sieving through your applicants, interviewing and finding the new employee that has the skills, experience and personal attributes to be a great fit for the role and your business.

Engagement and retention

If you want to employ someone who is ready to dive in and do the job your may have to pay a higher salary in order to attract the calibre of candidate you’re looking for. However, if the salary is an issue there are other tax efficient ways to engage and reward your employers. You could look at share option schemes, flexible working, bonus schemes and reward programmes designed to incentivise your employees and make them an even bigger asset to your team.