High turnover and short tenures are plaguing companies all over the world. While members of the Boomer generation averaged a tenure of 10.3 years, today’s incoming workforce stays at a job for just over three years before moving on. More than that, studies say that at any given time upwards of 85 percent of the global workforce is passively open to new job opportunities.
At the same time, hiring is expensive. The competitive market for attracting talent combined with lengthy and costly onboarding and training periods means low tenure is especially detrimental for companies looking to scale.
Regardless of industry, size or location, decreasing turnover and improving tenure is likely a goal of your company’s HR department. But what can be done to combat the job-hopping trend? While there’s no quick fix for retention, implementing proactive salary and benefit evaluations may go further than you’d think. Here’s what you need to know:
- Recruiters are actively messaging your top performers. It’s no secret. The best workers in all fields are currently employed. Companies work with recruiters to help find and attract top performers to their organizations. Which means the best employees on your team have likely received a message from a recruiter in the last 90 days.
- Targeted advertising puts jobs in front of your best employees every day. Even if a recruiter hasn’t recently contacted your star employees, today’s digital media landscape allows companies to put their job ads at eye level with your team. Facebook and LinkedIn allow for specific demographic and psychographic targeting that deliver millions of job ads daily, whether an individual is “job searching” or not.
- Nearly half of all adults are signed up for job alerts. According to a study conducted by Indeed, nearly half of all adults are actively subscribed to job alerts. Employees no longer have to search for a new job. Instead, the jobs come right to their inbox or smartphone every day. What’s more, many applications are done with the click of a button through platforms such as LinkedIn, Monster or Indeed.
Just 10 years ago, employees were exposed to far fewer job opportunities. At some point, it’s guaranteed that a job offer will at least look better than your organization does on paper.
While potential growth, loyalty, and company culture will help some when it comes to other offers, ultimately, the best way to ensure your top performers are satisfied within your company for a long time is to offer competitive compensation, benefits and perks.
In order to do this, you will need to implement proactive, job-specific, and performance-based evaluations of compensation, benefits and perks that each employee receives. These kinds of evaluations should recur regularly to keep It’s imperative that you understand the needs of your ideal workforce and then identify the specific offerings and partnerships to help your organization attract and retain these individuals.
From there, you should communicate openly with your workforce about the initiative so that your employees feel confident that their compensation packages are fair.
While increasing salaries may be one piece of the puzzle, more often than not, less expensive benefits like increased PTO, the ability to work from home and next-generation benefits such as personal trainers, yoga classes and continental breakfast offerings may be enough to push your organization above the rest.
Wondering how your company’s current total compensation packages compare to the rest of the industry? Contact one of our search advisors to discuss your next employee search.
