The workforce is changing and so are the ways to attract talent to your organization. Many companies are claiming talent shortages in the market and it’s being supported by research and surveys regarding the future of the workforce. According to a survey just 19 percent of college graduates claim to be interested in joining a big company, whereas 44 percent of survey participants have shown interest in joining a startup or a small organization.
Quite a strong signal. Some reasons being more and more millennials entering the workforce, their individual foundation and search of meaningfulness has changed from previous generations and resulting in different requirements for wanting to join your organization.
Many associate large companies with a rat-race environment and opt for e.g. startups and minor companies that promise innovation and meaningfulness in new perspectives and who are better in sync with them as an individual. Therefore, it is no longer a choice but a need to make workplaces innovative to attract the best talent.
Here are four fundamentals to focus on when attracting talent in 2020:
- Commit to creating an innovative space. Innovation is not something that can be done overnight. Make sure your employees know you are committed to creating a space that offers them growth and personal development. Every employee should be given the opportunity to share their ideas, and as an HR person, you need to implement them effectively when required.
- Plan personal development and individual growth. Work collaboratively on a plan that promises growth and development to new hires. Your insights of new hires from the recruiting process should benefit this. Insights related to personality, values and culture preferences in addition to skills should likely be in sync with company needs, values and culture preferences. A good starting point. Then start by listing the top skills of an individual and making a plan that utilizes it to the fullest. Playing into their talents. Additionally, also list areas the individual would like to improve. This will live out the message that you’re equally invested in every employee’s growth and are working towards advancing their career.
- Education and training programs. While everybody has ideas, not everyone can articulate and execute it. In such circumstances, offering training sessions supporting the individual to live out ideas in coherence with business purpose and goals is a must to enhance motivation and engagement and thus successful creativeness and innovation. An initiative like this helps in skills-building and in fact supports the skill transformation needed considering the increased emergence of new technologies disrupting functions and processes and thus challenging the organizational foundation.
- Cultivate an entrepreneurial and growth mindset. This might be the most important one supporting and being the framework for the previously mentioned. Entrepreneurship is often limited to startup founders and team leaders, but it is supposed to be cultivated in every employee. Introduce a boundary-less assignment internally that allows employees to look past organizational barriers. This gives every employee a chance to think like an entrepreneur and take initiatives not just stick to assigned duties. If initiatives are within the frame of company purpose and goals, unless it is an out of the box assignment, the outcome is likely to succeed from an entrepreneurial and growth mindset point of view. Cisco, for example, has created a space called “thingQbator” that allows employees to experiment with new technologies like AI/machine learning robotics, drones etc. Additionally, they can take hands-on workshops along with personalized training and guidance.
Today the responsibility of encouraging employees to pursue new perspectives and ways falls on the shoulders of Leadership and HR. An innovative workforce will create an innovative workplace and strengthening the organizational foundation and thus even intensify the attractiveness of being an innovative and meaningful company to join. Altogether creating a competitive edge for the company.
Being able to create a talent acquisition strategy obviously is just a step on the road. The capability to live out and execute the strategy is the key. In particular the capability to both attract and recruit in sync with above mentioned is vital. Attracting and recruiting with emphasis on personality, values and culture in addition to skills will become more and more important. Time change, people change. Fortunately, HR technologies are emerging to support exactly such purposes. The result being an increased support of HR and Leadership in the recruitment process and the underlying actions to achieve the above mentioned 4 fundamentals.
