Closing the Retention Gap With Young Workers
Filed under: Executive Hiring, IT Staffing, Job Searching, Recruiting
Attracting and retaining quality employees has become increasingly difficult with each new generation of workers. According to a survey conducted by The Conference Board, just 35% of workers under the age of 25 are currently satisfied with their jobs. That’s bad news for employers, because it means that the new generation of workers who are replacing retiring baby boomers may not demonstrate the same level of company loyalty that their predecessors did.
Reasons for Increasing Employee Dissatisfaction
Generation Y workers have far greater resources at their fingertips when it comes to job talent as well as job availability. Because young workers are increasingly talent-rich in technological fields, they are being courted by a broad spectrum of industry leaders. In addition, the internet has made it possible for this generation to work from home or strike out on their own if they’re not satisfied with current working conditions.
How Employers Can Close the Gap
For employers, the key to attracting and retaining quality talent in this type of job environment is engaging employees by identifying the reasons they leave, making them feel valued, and encouraging commitment to the mission of the company. Specifically, employers need to take steps such as the following in order to earn employee loyalty:
- Identify Flight Risks—Motivate employees to remain where they are by making sure they are a good fit for the position, promoting strong relationships, providing growth opportunities, and keeping an eye on external data such as job market and hiring trends.
- Invest in Most Valuable Employees—Invest your resources in those employees who will provide the most value long-term according to their growth potential and ambitions.
- Consider Flexible Work Arrangements—As the balance of work-life needs becomes increasingly difficult, consider offering options such as telecommuting, flexible hours, part-time opportunities, and job-sharing.
- Incorporate Both Financial and Non-Financial Rewards—While pay increases and bonuses remain strong motivators for employees, surveys also identify non-financial rewards such as benefit packages, increased autonomy, career development, and mentoring programs as reasons employees choose to remain with an organization.
- Promote From Within—Provide training opportunities and offer employees the potential to reach beyond their current positions.
- Conduct Routine Employee Interviews—Exit interviews can be helpful, but what about retention interviews? Consider interviewing the employees who are sticking around to find out why they’re staying, what they like and don’t like about their work environment, and what conditions might cause them to leave.
One of the most important steps businesses can take to increase satisfaction among workers is to listen to their concerns by promoting open dialogue. In a job market that has become increasingly competitive, organizations must focus not only on attracting the right talent, but also on keeping them satisfied in their positions.
Eight Tools to Boost Your Competitive Intelligence ROI
Competitive intelligence involves systematically gathering, analyzing, and utilizing information about other organizations in the effort to gain a competitive edge. When it comes to recruiting, competitive intelligence relies on understanding the labor market, researching industry and company trends, and gaining an in-depth knowledge of employee needs. While traditional competitive intelligence methods still carry significant weight, companies can also incorporate new tools in order to gather information as efficiently as possible while remaining cost effective.
- LinkedIn—Most professionals already use LinkedIn, but you may not be aware of the wealth of information that can be gleaned from its pages. Start by following competitor pages and discover key information about new hires, employees who have left, organizational charts, promotions and more. LinkedIn may be one of the most important tools you add to your competitive intelligence arsenal.
- The Free Library—Search by category, business name, or date to find information on what your competitors are doing. This is a great resource for discovering information about company restructuring or reorganization, often complete with names and positions.
- SocialMention—Follow your competitors and receive daily alerts when they are mentioned around the web. SocialMention helps you stay up to date on developing news as well as branding efforts and marketing campaigns.
- Google Alerts—An excellent resource for monitoring press releases, news stories, and other information about your competitors. Alerts can be customized by company, name, and endless other specific information that may be relevant to your industry. Set up an RSS feed or have the results delivered to your email.
- Facebook and Twitter—These twin pillars of the social media realm should also form the foundation for your competitive intelligence efforts. Follow not only your competitors and their employees, but also the people that they are following.
- Glassdoor—Research job openings, salaries, inside connections, employee reviews, and interviews to discover what your competitors are doing.
- Slideshare—Find out who is presenting, what they’re publishing, and much more with a few quick searches on Slideshare.
- Indeed—Search for competitor job availability, salaries, hiring trends and more.
Competitive intelligence plays a key role in discovering and attracting the right talent for your organization. Many of the tools above require minimal time investment and can deliver vital information directly to your inbox. As you become more familiar with your favorite tools, you can begin experimenting with less familiar resources in order to expand the effectiveness of your competitive intelligence efforts.
Press Release – 4/26/12
Hire Velocity Expands Leadership Team with New Director of Sales Amy Miller
Seasoned Business Development Executive Augments RPO Growth Strategy
ATLANTA & TAMPA, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Hire Velocity, a national Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) firm, announced that Amy Miller has joined its leadership team as Director of Sales. Miller has extensive experience building profitable markets through organic business development and operational best practices. She brings more than ten years of national and global account management to the position, with an emphasis on staffing and outsourced solutions.
Miller joins Hire Velocity from Yoh, where she served as Branch Manager/Group Director and oversaw IT staff augmentation services for the Southeast Region, covering 11 states and Puerto Rico. There, she operated in a hands-on leadership capacity, acting as a trusted advisor to clients across multiple industry segments, including Healthcare, Financial, IT, Energy Services and Retail. Earlier roles included global sales leadership and account management for Corpus, Modis and Technisource.
“Amy will play an instrumental role in both creating and executing business development strategies to maximize growth,” said Byron West, president of Hire Velocity. “With her deep industry background and passion for success, we expect her to hit the ground running and deliver the highest standards of excellence.”
Miller will be instrumental in launching an RPO-leveraged contingency search operation while enhancing prospecting activities for the firm’s high volume sourcing and screening services. Based in Atlanta, she will serve both small and medium sized businesses (SMB) and Fortune 1000 clients across diverse industry sectors. Miller is an active member of Women in Technology and the Technology Association of Georgia.
About Hire Velocity
Hire Velocity (http://www.hirevelocity.com) is a national Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) firm headquartered in Atlanta, GA, and a Hire Partners affiliate. Hire Velocity helps companies cost effectively meet high volume hiring demands by intelligently leveraging people, process and technology. Hire Velocity enables businesses of all sizes to reduce their time to hire quality people while driving down their recruiting costs. Follow Hire Velocity on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+.
About Hire Partners
Hire Partners, LLC, is an emerging enterprise that provides capital, expertise and operational support to staffing, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and other human capital businesses. Hire Partners accelerates the growth and profitability of successful firms by injecting both strategic and tactical guidance. Visit us at www.hirepartners.com. Follow Hire Partners on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or Google+.
Maximizing the value of your IT staffing firm
To maximize value, owners must have an end game in mind. For most, that means an eventual exit or sale. This does not always mean an immediate 100% sale but potentially a phased approach of “taking some chips off the table” and joining a larger organization that can help you reach your ultimate financial goals more securely, faster and to a greater degree than on your own. In staffing–and IT staffing in particular–there are several areas to focus on if creating above market value is your goal.
Following is a quick look at eight critical measures you should be focused on right from the outset:
1. Revenue Scale
2. Revenue Composition
- First, how much is coming from your core discipline (which under our current strategy is IT)? Some firms call themselves IT staffing while in reality their business includes a wide array of various technical and even administrative positions. We focus on businesses that support our strategy of creating a “pure play” IT staffing firm. The more pure, the higher the value. IT concentration of above 80% is preferred with a go-forward strategy aimed at 100%.
- Second, is your business concentrated within a small number of customers? Obviously, high concentration creates risk that the loss of one or two major clients could devastate a business. To minimize this risk, a business should not have a single customer contributing over 20% of their revenue, nor any five clients comprising over 50%.
- Third, do permanent placement fees represent over 10% of your revenue? Frankly, even 10% is high, but in the current environment, direct hiring is in high demand. Everyone likes how perm revenue juices up the bottom line, but the problem is its not recurring and walks out the door with the loss of key employees. It’s hard for a buyer to place a value on perm revenue, so expect it to be an area of significant negotiation.
3. Top-line Growth Rate
4. Deep Local Market Penetration
5. Contract Gross Margins
We prefer businesses that achieve contract gross margins at least in the 25% range. Even with companies scrutinizing costs to a greater degree than ever before, outstanding firms are achieving margins above this level. As margins slide toward the 20% mark, firms will struggle to achieve attractive EBITDA without a higher than desired mix of perm placement revenue.
6. Bottom Line Profitability
7. Management Team
8. Diversity Status
In many cases, firms under this type status will have a hard time attracting the attention of a mainstream buyer; the risk of revenue and earnings loss due to change in control is often too great. Again, there are many advantages from a sales and marketing perspective, but those considering diversity status should also factor in their long-term monetizing objectives.
Different buyers may place emphasis on additional factors, but a business that achieves high scores on the measures described above should command an above average valuation. If you’re smart, you’ll put a plan in place to achieve these best practices long before you’re even considering a sale. After all, there’s no downside to superior performance.
Hire Partners is actively making majority acquisitions of well-run IT staffing and RPO firms. To learn more or to see if your firm may fit our criteria, please contact John West at jwest@hirepartners.com.
John B. West Named Vice Chair, University of Tampa Board
“The University of Tampa recently announced its slate of officers for the next two years. John B. West of Hire Partners and Lion Investments will serve as vice chair. To read the official announcement published in the UT Journal CLICK HERE.”
With the Talent Mapping service you never miss a business opportunity.
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Talent mapping keeps qualified candidates at hand for when a position needs to be filled. With talent mapping you gain a peace-of-mind knowing that you have pre-qualified candidates for a position at hand who are ready to move in when necessary. Many companies, unfortunately, have found themselves suffering a great loss when a position becomes vacant within their organization. The time spent in the immediate search for a candidate to fit the position can takes weeks and even months, and can be very costly. This search can be even more damaging to the business when it is effecting the most critical positions. The impact this has on an organization can result in putting them behind competitors who have chosen to use services like Talent Mapping. Companies who use Talent Mapping are ensured that the position is filled right away and that there is a quick smooth transition of the candidate into the position.
Talent Mapping is a unique service, similar to Name Generation, but it goes a step further. In Name Generation candidates are generated and contact information is gathered from those that meet the required job specifications. Talent mapping requires a significant amount of more cold calling and research. The candidates are pre-qualified and then mapped into the company’s hierarchy. This visually displays the hierarchy of pre-qualified candidates for the client which is extremely valuable to recruiting efforts.
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