Author: M3 Placement

According to Goldman Sachs data published by Business Insider, the U.S. is in the middle of the biggest labor shortage since World War II. In fact, at least 3.6 million Americans have quit their jobs each month since April 2021.

However, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports another significant trend, fast emerging since November 2021. Described by the Chamber as “The Great Reshuffle,” the trend shows that workers who are quitting their jobs are quickly getting rehired elsewhere. All of which suggests that many employers are failing to meet the needs of their existing workers and losing them to other, more attractive opportunities as a result.

So, how can organizations retain key employees so vitally important to their future growth, innovation, and success?

As with anything else, information is powerful, which is why savvy H.R. departments routinely conduct Stay Interviews with employees – touchpoints and conversations to help them understand what individuals throughout their organizations want, need, and expect from the workplace.  With this information, managers and H.R. teams can work together to construct a culture and environment in ways that keep employees engaged, productive, and motivated to stay.

What Is a Stay Interview?

Glassdoor describes a Stay Interview as “a management tool designed to promote better employee retention.” When conducted effectively, a Stay Interview “helps management find out the things employees love about their job that make them continue to do it. The stay interview also finds out work-related factors that may influence the employee to take another job.” 

Asking the Right Questions

Indeed’s top 10 questions employers should ask during Stay Interviews cover topics ranging from what employees look forward to at work, what they don’t, and how the company can improve the employee experience overall.  Indeed also advises employers to specifically probe whether good work is recognized in meaningful ways, feedback is delivered in a timely and effective manner, company flexibility meets an employee’s need for work/life balance, and whether the employee clearly sees future opportunities for growth and advancement.

In addition to informing management and H.R. teams on the state of employee job satisfaction, Stay Interviews serve as points of engagement that tell employees their employer cares about what they think.

Given today’s hybrid, distributed workforce, these touchpoints have never been more important. The isolation that comes with new work-from-home business models has disrupted the connectedness that many employees had previously felt toward their jobs and colleagues when they had reported to the office daily. As advocated by Forbes Magazine, Stay Interviews can help companies address this dynamic by reinforcing ties with remote employees. “It’s easy to lose touch with employees when you aren’t physically seeing them every day, and in turn, employees can feel that their managers are out of touch,” the article states.

Introducing the Concept

However, when introducing Stay Interviews to employees, it is important to approach the initiative with sensitivity. Employees may feel a certain amount of apprehension about commenting on the quality of your work culture and may even perceive Stay Interviews as a practice designed to weed out unhappy employees. 

So, be sure to communicate their purpose well and generate buy-in for the process organization-wide. The Stay Interview should be met by employees confidently and comfortably, so they can provide you with meaningful feedback you can use to improve your culture and workplace on their behalf.

Interviewing a broad selection of employees at different levels within the firm and at different perceived levels of engagement is a best practice that helps diffuse any concerns employees may have in sharing their thoughts. Be sure to also follow up with employees after a Stay Interview to let them know what you learned and any actions the company intends to take based on their recommendations.

Seeking Professional Guidance

Employee relations can be tricky and must always be handled with care and expertise. To make the most of Stay Interviews and other delicate H.R. practices, the help of a seasoned professional outsourcing firm can prove invaluable. 

Look for a partnering firm with a vast toolkit of resources and a proven track record of helping organizations put in place workplace policies and practices that speak to employee values and aspirations. The firm you select should offer strategic consulting and organizational assessment services that are both effective for the firm and rewarding for the employees involved. 

M3 Placement and Partnership can help. We bring the depth of experience and expertise needed to help you manage your Stay Interview campaign from start to finish and then translate the results into actionable insights. 

Ultimately, your employees are the bedrock of your future, and their long-term commitment to your firm is essential to your success. Providing them with a sense of security, optimism, and well-being is a sound business practice that will inspire their loyalty and keep them engaged for years to come.

Schedule your free consultation now.

In just about any article that you read about the current hiring market challenges, you’ll see the term “culture” come up often. Industry experts all agree that your culture is a key determinant in a candidate’s willingness to join your organization and an employee’s willingness to stay on board.

But exactly what are those candidates and employees looking for when they attempt to gauge your culture and decide whether it’s a good match with their wants and needs?

If you expect to attract and retain the top talent it takes to grow and thrive, you can’t assume what your candidates and employees mean when they say they value a company’s culture. In a job market that continues to be extraordinarily competitive, it pays to know exactly what talent is looking for in a company culture today. 

What is a Company Culture?   

While the definitions may vary a bit, at a minimum a company culture encompasses its mission, vision, and values, which are typically stated on your website, in internal documents, and displayed at your offices and other work sites. It also includes components that may not be stated directly, but which certainly impact your workforce’s experience and perceptions, such as managers’ (unwritten) expectations and office politics, to name a few.

Even though some companies don’t give much thought to their organizational culture, it’s integral to your success. Culture affects everything from your ability to recruit top talent, to your employee retention rate, job satisfaction, worker productivity, and even profitability. 

To ensure you can find and keep the talent you need to achieve your objectives, you need to have a good handle on what job seekers and tenured staff look for in a positive company culture. That understanding will give you a solid foundation to take the next step: improving your culture to align with the expectations of your current and prospective employees.  

What the Research Says About Company Culture

Often, business leaders believe they have a good sense of what employees and job candidates value in their culture. But in many cases, those perceptions are based on hearsay and assumptions. Even when companies use tools like surveys to assess how employees view their culture, there are limitations to what they can glean. Employees aren’t always candid in surveys (even when you assure them the results will be confidential) and few companies survey their job candidates about how they view the company’s culture based on the interview experience.  

However, one vehicle that employees and candidates do tend to feel comfortable using to share their thoughts about a company’s culture is online review sites, like Glassdoor. To leverage this valuable source of information, researchers at MIT Sloan analyzed 1.4 million Glassdoor reviews using a natural language processing tool they developed for the specific purpose of analyzing employee feedback. Their objective was to determine which factors have the greatest effect on an organization’s culture score on Glassdoor. 

To the researchers’ surprise, some elements that leaders tend to assume are important about their culture didn’t rank as high as might be expected. In fact, while organizations often tout perks like employee benefits when recruiting talent, they ranked lower than other priorities.  

Respect Tops the List

The factor that outscored any other in the MIT Sloan study by a wide margin was an organization’s respect for its employees. While respect is a broad term, it usually encompasses elements like displaying courtesy and consideration and treating people fairly and with dignity. In the Glassdoor reviews analyzed, people used very strong language to describe how their companies do or don’t show respect for employees—demonstrating just how important it is and the depth of feelings it can provoke.

The next most-often cited elements focused on a company’s leadership—specifically, leaders who are supportive of their teams and demonstrate the company’s values through their own actions.  Employee benefits and other workplace perks, which are often emphasized in recruitment ads, ranked in the middle of the pack.

What to Consider When Evaluating Your Culture

In addition to these top priorities, employees and candidates consider a broad range of factors when they evaluate your organizational culture and determine whether it’s a good fit with their values, desires, and expectations. The following tend to be strong indicators of a company’s culture:

• Turnover rate. High turnover signals that employees are dissatisfied with the company and willing to leave for a better environment, whether that’s driven by salary or other requirements. Even in a labor market where employees are changing jobs more readily, higher-than-average turnover can be a sign of a poor culture.  
• Average employee tenure. Generally, employees stay with a company longer when the culture is positive and supportive. Low tenure is often an indicator of a negative environment. 
• Diversity and inclusion. Now more than ever, employees and candidates look for a company culture that encourages the development of a diverse workforce and demonstrates inclusiveness in its hiring and operational practices.   
• Open communication. Transparency and open lines of communication, at all levels, are must-haves for any company that wants to attract and retain top talent.  
• Accessible, authentic leaders. When your leaders are visible, approachable, open, and honest, it tells employees and candidates they are heard and valued. 
• Growth and development opportunities. Organizations that provide various vehicles for professional development and advancement tend to be viewed as having a more positive culture than companies that don’t make these opportunities a priority. Whether it’s investing in ongoing training or laying out clear paths for career advancement, these measures show employees and candidates that you value them.  
• Trust in employees. The remote work trend is a prime example of how companies can be challenged to display trust in their workforce. Organizations that believe employees can work productively outside an office environment are viewed as more trusting than companies that assume their workers can’t be productive unless they’re present on site.
• A passionate workforce. While it’s hard to quantify the level of passion of a company’s workforce, you know it when you see it. When a company’s staff is deeply committed to its mission, highly enthusiastic about its work, and excited to start work every day, that’s a clear sign of a positive culture.

Now that you know what employees and candidates are likely to look for in a company’s culture, how do you accurately assess your organization’s culture and ensure it meets expectations? Turn to the recruitment and strategic HR experts at M3 Partnership and Placement! 

The M3 team has extensive experience helping organizations improve both recruitment and retention through our wide range of services—including organizational and cultural assessments that offer deep insights and employee engagement programs that improve staff satisfaction and retention.  

Schedule a call with M3 to learn how you can gain the insights to ensure your culture supports better employee recruitment and retention. 

If you run a high-growth business and you expect to need an influx of employees—for initiatives like launching a new product or entering a new market—how much lead time will you need to get those new team members on board?

The answer may surprise you.

With all the movement of employees today, you might expect there are lots of candidates looking, so the hiring runway can’t be that bad. But if you hope to achieve significant growth, you can’t simply run recruitment ads and hope job seekers find you on a reasonable timeline. Those days are long gone.

To ensure you find the right talent at the right time to fuel your growth, you need to develop a strategic hiring plan before you’re ready to start the hiring process—and do some housekeeping in the meantime to position yourself for the best results. No matter where you are in the journey to build out your team, it’s never too soon to evaluate your hiring plan and set up your organization for success.

How the Job Market is Changing 

In the current job market, you can’t assume the right talent will find you precisely when you need them. Yes, it’s true that people are still switching jobs—sometimes for more money, other times for a better work/life balance or a more supportive work environment. But it’s not the same job market as it was in 2020, when the term “The Great Resignation” first surfaced.  

In the early days of the pandemic, some employees were willing to leave a job without having a new place to land. Others made relatively impulsive decisions to switch companies simply because the new job paid more. For many people, the emotions and uncertainty fueled by the pandemic encouraged job moves that might not have happened only a year earlier. 

Now, employees appear to be taking a more measured, cautious approach to changing jobs, partly because some have found the grass wasn’t necessarily greener on the other side. With potentially fewer people actively looking to make a move—or willing to consider a recruiter’s call—companies are finding the process even slower than before. That means you’ll need to start preparing your hiring plans sooner and get your recruiting house in order faster.  

Why Your Hiring Plan Needs to Change, Too 

One reason you need more lead time to develop a hiring plan is because that plan needs to go far beyond what you might have expected in the past. 

Of course, a good hiring plan must always include fundamental components like these:

• The number and types of positions you need to fill
• Accurate, comprehensive, compelling job descriptions (which involves doing a deep dive with your hiring managers – not simply dusting off the same, tired role descriptions you’ve been using for decades)
• Your intended outreach methods 
• The evaluation and assessment methods your HR team and hiring managers will use
• The available recruitment budget

But an effective hiring plan today must also go beyond those basic components. Before you can begin to recruit the top talent it takes to run a profitable, thriving, high-growth company, you may need to do housekeeping on critical aspects like the following.  

• Your employment brand. What does your employment brand say about your organization and what it will be like to work there? Have you even given much thought to your employment brand? Many companies don’t because they haven’t had to in the past. But just like a product or service brand prepares you for the experience of buying and using it, your employment brand tells candidates what to expect of your hiring and onboarding experience. It should be consistent with your values, convey a positive and compelling message, and differentiate your business from other employers. Consider whether you’re setting up your candidates to expect the Ritz Carlton or the Holiday Inn. 
• Your interview experience. Are you still interviewing solely through channels like Zoom or can you conduct some interviews in person, especially for senior roles? The more high-touch the experience, the better you’ll connect with candidates. Also consider the tone and frequency of your communication during the hiring process. If you’re rigid, aloof, slow to respond, or go entirely dark for weeks, viable candidates will lose interest. 
• Your onboarding experience. If your new hire onboarding will take place virtually, is the experience set up in a way that makes people feel part of the culture? 
• Your pay scale and benefits. Have your salaries, bonuses, and benefits kept pace with changing conditions and expectations over the last two years? To attract top talent and meet the requirements of today’s workforce, you need to ensure your compensation package is competitive.  
• The state of your leadership. Are your leaders in a good place emotionally, ready to help you build out your team and provide the guidance your new hires will need? Are any of your key leaders approaching retirement age? If so, you’ll need a solid succession plan, along with sufficient lead to time to recruit for those tough-to-fill positions and provide a smooth transition during a time of high growth.   
• Your managers’ EQ. Emotional intelligence, often called EQ, is one of the most important factors in any employee’s success. When those employees are charged with managing others, especially in these volatile times, their EQ becomes even more critical. For example, if your new hires will work remotely or hybrid your managers will need to be equipped to supervise, motivate, and lead effectively in this environment. 
• Your online presence. Have you checked your company’s reviews on websites like Glassdoor and Indeed? Do you know what your current and former employees and job candidates are saying about your company on social media? Your online presence may be a candidate’s first encounter with your company, so be sure you have a good handle on what they’re seeing and be ready to mitigate any issues.    

How the Right Partner Can Help 

Given the increasing complexity of hiring in the current market, it’s never too early to start developing a strategic hiring plan. That’s especially true if you have aggressive growth objectives—whether you’re in a transformative industry like clean energy, you’re developing breakthrough technologies, or you’re building out your geographic footprint or product portfolio.

A well-conceived hiring plan will help you obtain the talent you need to turn your growth goals into reality, enabling you to attract new team members who can support your strategic objectives and initiatives, proactively build out your bench, and plan for the smooth succession and transition of senior leaders.  

When high-growth companies need hiring plans that help them attract and retain top talent to achieve their goals, they turn to M3 Partnership & Placement! Our team is highly experienced in developing strategic hiring plans that position high-growth companies for the best outcomes.

Contact M3 to schedule an introductory call!

Sweeping changes have redefined the workplace over the past three years, creating new challenges and opportunities for HR professionals. Consider, for example, how quickly the pandemic digitally transformed companies, shuttering offices virtually overnight and transitioning employees to remote, work-from-home models. For essential businesses and others that remained open, the challenges have been just as great, leaving HR professionals to grapple with the unpredictability of outbreaks and shifting health and safety mandates.

Recent changes in consumer behaviors have also presented new challenges for HR teams, tasking them, for example, with quickly hiring and reskilling employees to meet a sudden influx of e-commerce business. And just when the building blocks of our advancing digital economy were in place, the nation’s reopening brought with it an entirely new set of HR challenges: rapid economic growth that has led to significant labor shortages and wage increases.

Amidst all this upheaval, the role HR plays within organizations has changed as well, with C-suite executives relying on their HR colleagues more than ever for direction on how to build the kind of workforce and culture they need to seize marketplace opportunities and navigate today’s uncharted economic waters. As the scope of HR responsibilities continues to grow, many industry professionals are feeling the pressure of increased workloads and lengthy hours – and many are simply burned out.

So, how can organizations provide the support these vitally important employees need today, and when does it make sense to implement an outsourcing model to assist?

The Case for Outsourcing Professional Placements

Many HR functions are easily handed off to external providers to reduce the burden of routine tasks. However, investments in outsourcing partnerships should yield more than time and productivity for HR teams. They should add value up and down the organization by supporting and advancing a company’s strategic objectives. And they should stand the test of time.

Savvy organizations recognize this – and they also know that that succeeding in a fast-evolving economy often comes down to a single overriding factor: leadership. Accordingly, many organizations are seeking to expand their senior management teams today with experienced individuals who align with their values and vision and are well prepared to unlock innovation organization-wide.

Executive searches are complex, though, and often take the kind of time and attention busy HR departments don’t have. Enlisting the services of the right professional placements firm can help.  

Here are four reasons to outsource your professional placements now – and what factors to consider when selecting a partnering firm:

1) To Bring More Hands On-Deck

The HR role has never been more expansive, challenging, or critical to an organization’s success. The right outsourcing firm will allow your HR department to stay focused on its core responsibilities, giving professionals the added capacity they need, along with the all-important networking resources required to identify and effectively pursue top-level talent. Look for a firm with a proven track record of success both within and outside your industry who can speak to the importance of aligning new senior-level hires with your strategic goals and corporate values.

2) To Gain Insights from an Outside Perspective

When hiring a professional placement firm, you should get more than its employees’ recruiting skills and expertise. You should also benefit from having an objective source of input and guidance on your own internal hiring processes, especially those serving the highest levels of your organization.

Top firms in this space will get to know your business well, impart best practices they have implemented time and again, and help you apply proven strategies and recommendations to improve your own hiring practices going forward. Bringing in the right neutral partner will also ensure that emotions, personal relationships, and other intangibles don’t influence the hiring process – so the best person for the position, department, and organization is ultimately brought on board.   

3) To Tap a Broader Network of Connections

When a key leadership position goes unfilled, this puts strain on managers and employees alike. An experienced professional placement firm will be in close contact with internal stakeholders to forge relationships and gain an understanding of their own individual needs and vision for the new hire.

The right firm will also leverage its own network of trusted candidate contacts in the search. In fact, the most successful professional placements often result from established relationships between prospective candidates and professional placement firms, long-term connections built over time and based on mutual trust.

4) To Extend the Search Beyond Traditional Channels

While job seekers at all stages of their careers often look to social sites to peruse opportunities, these resources rarely produce the pool of talented candidates companies need to successfully fill senior-level positions. Factors such as whether an applicant is a good fit for your company culture are difficult to discern from resumes, cover letters, and online profiles.

This is where the expertise of top professional placement firms truly shines. Through strategically crafted interviews, assessments, and personal communications, the partner you select should evaluate candidates through the lens of your immediate needs, long-term goals, and corporate culture to ensure the candidates they recommend are right for the job and will become productive, innovative, and professionally fulfilled members of your organization over time.

The firm you select should also effectively champion the position and your company with candidates, serving in as much a marketing role as a recruiting one to inspire excitement for the position you are offering today – and the growth opportunities available down the road.

Exceptional Leadership Is Worth the Investment: We’re Here to Help

Given the challenges of the current labor market and the increasing complexities of HR and talent acquisition functions, outsourcing professional placement processes is a smart move for many companies today. When the time is right, M3 Placement and Partnership is here to set your strategy on track and your search in motion with:

• The experience, relationships, and depth of cross-industry knowledge your professional placement search deserves
• A roll-up-your-sleeves approach to the search, giving you the boots on the ground your HR team needs, as well as strategic advisory services you can tap to take your hiring processes to the next level going forward
• Multi-channel sourcing strategies that effectively get the word out to the right audience in the right way while leveraging the trusted relationships we have built over time with our expansive network of corporate leaders
• Proven strategies for attracting top-level talent to meet each organization’s needs, an approach that holistically considers where your company is today, where you want to be tomorrow, and the unique characteristics that make a qualified candidate the ideal match for your firm, your industry, and your future

Find out how outsourcing professional placements with M3 can help your business grow and lead even in the most challenging environments. Contact M3 to schedule an initial consultation.