Could you pay your employees with ‘more time’ ?
Across Australia, employees are prioritising and seeking a balance between work and their private lives.
According to Randstad’s employer brand research report 2022, work-life-balance tops the list. It’s what employees value most.
Top 5 – what employees value most
Over 6,000+ employees were surveyed across a wide range of industries. The 5 things that they value most are:
- Flexible work arrangements (44%)
- Training and development (36%)
- Wellness and mental health resources (35%)
- Pay and job security (31%)
- Career development (29%)
For many SME’s, it may not be practical or possible to offer flexibility across the board. What else could we do? What could we do differently?
Invest in time and do things differently
More than ever before, if we want to retain and attract new talent to our business, we must make more time to talk to our people and also think about want we can do differently. Perhaps some lateral thinking is required.
Research undertaken by Gartner (a global research and consultancy company) in 2021, revealed that:
- 85% want to work for a business that ‘sees them as a person’; and
- 77% want to grow beyond their current role.
Genuinely care and take an interest
The research tells us that our employees and job applicants want to work for businesses that ‘sees them as a person’.
We can be courteous, respectful and kind. We can make the time to get to know and take an interest in our people. By doing this, we actively demonstrate that we care about our people. We want them to work and stay in our business.
We can share our strategies through story-telling to demonstrate what we do differently to our competitors to look after our people’s mental and physical health.
We may offer career development through mentoring and on the job training. This lets our people know that we really want them to grow with our business.
Build a positive brand image
We can make the time to keep in touch and get back to our job applicants. So many times job applicants say:
‘I applied for the job, but had no response’
‘I had an interview but then I never heard from them again’
A short courtesy email or telephone call to our job applicants is all that is needed. This simple action lets applicants know how much we respect and value their time and their interest in our business.
‘People will forget what we said but people will not forget how we made them feel’.
Build talent pools
Always be on the lookout for potential employees even when there are no vacant positions. We can build our own ‘talent pools’ by keeping the contact details of the people we meet who may be a good fit for our business. We may even decide to create a new position for a ‘top talent’.
To conclude
Simple actions that show our people that we genuinely care, that we’re interested and we want them to grow with our business, may help us retain our people and attract new talent to our business.
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