Accelerate your talent branding, acquisition & engagement strategies
By Kimberlea Kozachenko, CEO & Founder
In the talent management game, benefits matter. And change management can have a huge impact on the success of your people programs. Follow this effective approach to accelerate your organizations talent attraction and acquisition strategies and build & retain the best teams for your business.
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Benefits matter. More than ever. Gone are the days when employers can attract the best and brightest talent by offering just a paycheck. In a candidate-driven market, benefits can sway decisions about employment offers. And be assured, candidates who will catalyze your business growth, be ambassadors for your employer brand and advocates for your mission, are looking for more than a bi-weekly boost in their bank accounts. They’re looking for an employer that invests in them.
The trouble comes when trying to connect everything together. How do you tie your wellness programs to your talent attraction strategy? What’s the relationship between parental leave and employee retention? How do learning opportunities play a part in your employer branding strategy? How do you take your benefits from a package of perks to something that is meaningful to candidates and employees?
The first step is looking at all the talent management puzzle pieces and understanding their nuances so you can eventually put them all together. Here are three parts of talent management that you need to consider from a benefits perspective:
1. Talent Attraction
The benefits a company offers gives candidates a more compelling picture of the overall company culture. For example, offering “bring your pet to work” options shows that a company cares about furry little friends as well as work/life balance. Make the connection for job seekers so they see your list of benefits as more than perks, but as a representation of what the company stands for.
Be intentional and clear about why your company thinks the benefits are an important part of each employee’s life. Leverage your company story or mission statement to show how the benefits that set you apart extend to all aspects of the organization.
2. Employee retention
The effects of great benefits don’t end once an employee is in the door. They also have a tremendous impact on whether or not an employee decides to stay with or leave an organization.
Glassdoor’s 2015 Q3 Employee Confidence Survey found that 79% of employees over the age of 18 would prefer an additional benefit over a pay increase. And the importance of new and extensive benefits packages will only increase in the coming years. Of employees between the ages of 18 and 34, 89 percent said they’d prefer new benefits to a raise. As Millennials continue to overtake the workforce, you need to keep up with their needs in order to retain them.
That doesn’t mean that every year you need to roll out a new, trendy perk. What’s more important is making sure that the basics are in place and up-to-date with the reality of your employees’ situations.
Take health care insurance, for instance. This has long been considered a basic benefit for employers to offer, and the Glassdoor survey found it’s the benefit employees value the most. However, with all the changes in healthcare that have occurred in recent years, it’s important to check that the coverage you offer is still meeting employees’ needs. Because if it’s not, it’ll be difficult to keep your best talent around.
3. Employer brand and reputation
Company reviews now weigh heavily on job seekers’ decisions about job. A Glassdoor survey found that 61 percent of Glassdoor users seek company reviews and ratings before deciding to apply for a job. What current and former employers have to say about their experience working for you can make or break talent management.
Make sure that you’re doing your part to manage your employer brand and reputation with a two-pronged approach. The first, which was touched upon earlier, is offering the right benefits to your employees. Doing so will lead to happier employees who can act as positive brand ambassadors for the organization.
The second is actively sharing the information job seekers want to know. This goes beyond listing job perks in job descriptions. It also means publicly sharing company updates that reflect the culture and the work experience.
Get creative. Use social media or press releases as a way to differentiate your employer brand from others vying for top talent. And don’t forget to communicate with your current team about your brand and reputation. The more transparent internal communication is, the more up-to-date employees will be about all the organization has to offer. They can, in turn, pass that message on to their professional network in order to attract more talent.
Making the Necessary Changes
Now that you see how your benefits impact your overall talent management strategy, it’s time for the next step: making improvements. Whether that means revising the current package or finding new must-have perks, the process is pretty much the same.
1. Determine your priorities
Rolling out new benefits requires a significant amount of resources. It’d be a shame to waste time, energy, and money on a change that isn’t necessary. To avoid that, assess which changes will have the biggest, positive impacts for the organization.
Just remember to really listen to what employees say they want or need. If they aren’t given the chance to voice their opinion or concerns, you’re more likely to make a bad choice that will ripple through the organization and negatively impact the aforementioned aspects of talent management.
2. Do research
Sometimes there are multiple solutions to a problem. For instance, if employees indicate that they’d like more paid time off, there are hundreds of ways to provide that. You could offer more vacation days, widen the definition of what constitutes a personal or sick day, offer more flexibility in scheduling, or even other possible options you’ve never heard of.
Explore what other companies are doing both inside and outside your industry to get inspiration for the right benefits for you. This will also give you the chance to learn from others mistakes or allow you to build upon their successes.
3. Organize a change management team in-house
Not every decision needs to come from on-high. In fact, for a change management team to be truly effective, it needs two things: a clear and thorough vision and team members who are invested in the goals.
Yes, executive buy-in is important, but that doesn’t mean they should be calling all the shots. Engage employees from multiple levels with, a wide range of expertise so that everyone’s perspectives are taken into consideration. Give them a say in setting goals for new benefits programs as well as how to ensure those goals are met.
4. Roll out the change
Once everything is in place, it’s time to make the change company-wide. That means being thoughtful and transparent in your communication regarding the benefit. Employees need to have a full understanding of what is different and how it will positively impact their lives.
Define a clear central message about the change, and train company leaders so they know how to speak about and answer questions on the change. This means creating a communications toolkit and FAQ for managers and HR employees.
5. Assess success
Collect feedback about the new benefit over time. Monitor how many employees are participating in the benefit and how satisfied they are with it. This will help you identify what is going right and where further tweaking is necessary.
And most importantly, keep the entire organization in the loop. If you find a problem with the new change, let employees know what you plan to do about it. Ask for their suggestions about how to refine things and answer their questions to quell their concerns. That will help keep the initiative on track and relevant to what your talent wants.
Whether celebrating your company culture by sharing details around your benefits, or developing a plan to improve the perks you offer, remember that the main goal is talent management and alignment to the needs of your talent throughout their entire experience with your company. You’re working to attract and retain top talent, while building, promoting and accelerating your employer brand. And sometimes that means making some game changing decisions.
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Author notes:
I personally believe that relentless innovation, transparency and genuine connections will transform global talent practices for the better. Sharing best practices in abundance is something I'm passionate about and look forward to growing and accelerating intellectually with each of you.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to the Glassdoor team for their continued dedication to elevating talent practices globally and for publishing this article to their Glassdoor for Employers blog.