Competition raises the bar of service delivery to customers…AND services to employees. It is kind of a nice world in a job seeker’s market, eh?
If you are the employer, it feels a bit like you are in a Gladiator arena fighting off your competition.
Working in a region with a 1.8% unemployment market also makes the employer feel a bit like living in a post-apocalyptic world…you look outside and all you see is a vision from a movie starring Will Smith….there is no one around to take your jobs. Where did all the employees go? 5 years ago we were turning people away in swarms and now we have to headhunt people. Oh how the tables have turned!
This is when I have to remind myself: Competition is GOOD. It will only serve to make us better.
So what did we do to set ourselves apart? We focused inward. We realized our dollars are best spent by trying to keep the people we have already happily employed. Huh…well that changes everything. We focused heavily on retaining our quality talent. Though we continue to actively recruit due to our growth rate, we started focusing on active retention more so than ever before.
Wouldn’t ya know…..our turnover rates have been steadily dropping, even in this post-apocalyptic 1.8% employment market, where everyone has another option.
What are we doing differently?
We are defining career paths, leadership tracks and discovery processes. We have started to better define career paths within the company for upboarding/promotion potential. We have been spending a lot of time on developing pretty flow charts, new positions and a defined timeline for new employees to envision themselves here long-term when they come through the doors. Do you want to be in a leadership position? We have a track for you. Do you want to stay in direct client services and be paid well? We have that too.
We talk about benefits a lot. All the time, in fact. We do benefits surveys and then actually DO something with the information. We look into the suggestions and find things to implement. Everything from pet insurance to 401k programs to tuition loan repayments are things we actively research to determine what will make the most impact on keeping our team invested and engaged. We have been incorporating several new benefits every year as we grow. We continue to remind everyone that works for us all the cool things our company offers…over and over and over again.
We invest in FUN. Work hard, play hard…. as long as we remember to play. We pay for kickball teams, baseball games and leadership retreats. We create opportunities for our team to bond, enjoy themselves and remember that they work with really great coworkers.We pay $$ for people to refer other talented people. Birds of a feather flock together, right? I’ve found this expression to be VERY true. We have established an employee referral program with cash bonus incentives as our current employees are often our best recruitment source. We pay for people to refer people just as amazing as they are.
We recruit for positions from Out-of-State. We are lucky that we live in Colorado and have a “nature calling” for people to move across the country to come here. It isn’t too terribly a hard of a sale to say “Come to Boulder County, Colorado”. Many people say “Yes, I’ll be there within a month.” Over half of our top recruits are now from out of the State, across all of our businesses, even our restaurant. These external recruitment efforts have made our workforce more diverse and vibrant as a result.
We pay competitively. I personally review industry standards of wages at an obsessive level to make sure that we are keeping pace as we grow and evolve. We also continue to use a transparent pay model and heavily incentivize our team retention through bonuses. This has been effective in creating stability in our leadership teams while also increasing the company growth trajectory exponentially.
- We encourage and pay for professional development. Anybody that is choosing to make our work into a career receives support from us. We offer an initial training plan that is several weeks long in addition to ongoing industry-specific trainings monthly for the first six months. We pay for our specialists to receive their licenses/credentials through actual fee reimbursement and also through ongoing professional development credits. We created an 8-week training program for new managers to understand what it means to be in a leadership position. We also continue to splurge on conferences, seminars and external trainers to keep us all on the up and up in our industry. As long as our employees invest in the company, we invest back in them. It is a win-win.
Just remember that Competition is Good whenever you stop and ask yourself “Where have all the job seekers gone?”
Did I mention Colorado is a really wonderful place to live? Check it out… and then call us at Sample Supports, Gallery 1874, Sample Therapy Services, Crystal Joys or Samples Restaurant.
This Post was originally published on Medium.com on 8/7/17. Follow Carmen's Medium Blog. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook!
