It’s that time of the year when we reflect on our experiences and accomplishments to create new goals, life changing habits, promises and resolutions that will inspire growth and make us feel renewed. It’s when we make intentional decisions with hopes to improve outcomes in our lives personally and professionally. One of the most important decisions you can make is starting the year off strong with a positive work culture. Here are 4 essential strategies on how to hire and retain the right talent to do just that.
Communicate and model your core values. From your website and employee handbook, to informal conversations with colleagues, transparent organizational beliefs is key. This informs joyful culture, clarifies expectations, and creates buy-in to the work. Effectively communicating and living your core values, from upper level management down, will minimize assumptions that will build a unified and aligned work community. This is especially critical during expansion and change in organizational direction in establishing norms.
Create a comprehensive interview process and execute it with fidelity. Now that you’ve communicated your core values, assess these non-negotiable traits in every step of your interview process. Like most interviews, the process should evaluate mindset, skills, and culture. However, maintaining a consistent candidate experience is a priority for the equity of the process. Involving and training interviewers (colleagues and stakeholders) to have specific roles is essential in the evaluation process. This practice will help you make the right hiring decision that is fair and credible – eliminating stereotypes, structural racism, and affinity bias.
Conduct a culture audit. One best practice for employee retention is to take a close look at your culture and how it impacts performance and innovation. This assessment is challenging, but necessary. It will help you to identify and problem solve the cultural challenges to keep employees vested and engaged. Through deliberate interviews, surveys, and observations, you can create a plan with intentional actions that will influence attitudes and create an expansive work environment.
Invest in your team. The most important asset of an organization are their employees. They are the exceptional individuals that make your dream a reality, so why not invest in building their capacity through professional development and create career pathways? The more you invest in them, coupled with a strong culture, the higher their engagement and performance.
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Also published on LinkedIn.