Employ Training And Evaluation To Triumph Over Turnover 
Employees are now more mobile and motivated than ever, which requires employers to work overtime to attract, keep and satisfy employees - all while labouring to run a profitable business. Business owners intent on trimming turnover should not underestimate the value of training and performance evaluation.
5 Reasons People Leave Their Employer
The rapid changes in technology and business conditions have generated numerous reasons, real and perceived, for employees to leave their jobs at regular intervals.
Finding Superstars Who Stay
It's easier to retain employees who feel their talents are aligned with their work. Companies can do more to foster this process. People who are hired as a good fit from the beginning are more likely to stay in the long run.
Finders Keepers - Losers Weepers
How to attract, retain and develop your talent. A must read for all leaders and managers - if you want to keep your best people away from the head-hunters and weekend papers!
Employee Inductions That Keep Staff With You Longer
No matter what size your organisation, the first impression you make on new staff is all-important. Whether on an individual or group basis, your employee induction process is critical to keeping people with you longer.
Exit Signs - How To Spot An Employee On The Job Hunt
Early warning signs of an employee looking elsewhere provide scope to remedy the situation if necessary, or put you in good stead to begin the hunt for a new replacement and ensure the transition passes smoothly. Learn the 5 signs of an impending departure.
8 Retention Strategies For Any Generation
While there are obvious differences between Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y, the differences at a collective level are minimal.
Bye, Bye Boomers: Planning For The Inevitable
Your leaders are leaving soon and you may have gaps within the ranks, both in qualified people and the necessary competencies. While this is potentially alarming information, now is not the time to panic.
Managing Low-Wage Employees
If you're not paying your employees 20% more than your competitors, you've got a problem. Thankfully, the 20% doesn't need to be made up of cold hard cash.
Differentiating Recruitment Firms
To assist people in the selection of a recruitment provider, an eight point checklist is provided below.
Generation Why
Generation Y employees are also known as Generation Why. They need to totally understand why they're expected to do something before they embrace it.
Keeping That Seat Occupied
People want to be appreciated, valued, and acknowledged above all else. This is something that you, as an SME, can provide that big companies just never will. Play to this strength.
When Key Staff Take Annual Leave, Give Them A Break!
If your staff member doesn't actually leave work, because you won't let them virtually through text and email, they don't get the restorative benefits of going on leave in the first place - and you get a crazy, stressed out staff member with a cranky family.
Managing The Early Days - Setting Expectations
A new recruit's first weeks are often stressful - for the recruit and for the manager. Managing the expectations of both parties is key to making a new work relationship successful. And this should start right back at the planning stage.
Induction - First Impressions Really Count
You may already be losing your best potential employees before you meet them.
Re-Engage Your Team And Watch Your Organisation Grow
It used to be that the biggest staffing problem managers had to deal with was high turnover. Today, the real issue is engagement ... finding a way to get staff to do more than just turn up to work physically. It's about finding ways to engage them mentally and emotionally.
Diversity Recruiting
Diversity is one of the most difficult, and sometimes controversial, aspects of recruiting. Competition is fierce, and the number of quality minority candidates can be low.
Three Key Drivers For Retaining The "Best Of The Best" In Your Organisation
These three leadership retention drivers will retain your best and brightest employees and contribute to the forward movement of your company.
8 Crucial Conversations That Engage
At the heart of a strong employee/manager relationship is communication. Are you making the most of your opportunities to have conversations that engage?
Techniques For Interviewing Applicants
Interviewing applicants for prospective employment is one of the most important parts of any manager's job.
Selecting The Right Recruitment Agency
The following checklist may help you select the agency that will best meet your needs.
Ask The Right Questions To Identify The Right Recruits
There are plenty of tips for job seekers on how to behave in an interview, but what's the secret to successfully conducting one?
Treat Recruitment Like Marketing
Why is it that retailers get all excited and place all their efforts and resources in attracting a new client, yet penny pinch in trying to obtain a new employee?
Exit Interviews - Too Little Too Late?
If your spouse was considering breaking up with you, would you want to know the reasons and concerns in advance so that you could sort it out? Or would you be content finding out after the divorce was filed, in the hope that you would get it right the next time? I'm guessing it's the former.
Are Your Employees Engaged?
Why are organisations not doing enough to fix the problem of low employee engagement levels?
Interview Questions Every Manager MUST Ask!
Employee engagement begins with the recruitment process. If we get this element of the engagement journey right, then engaging employees is easy!
Every Leadermanager™ Is Responsible For Succession Planning
Succession planning is not just about executives, it is about every role in your organisation.
Re-Entering The Workforce With Confidence
‘Pausing', rather than ‘escaping', from the workforce, whether it is to earn a graduate degree, start a family or semi-retirement, does not mean success in the business world cannot be attained.
Six Ways To Preserve Your Most Valuable Asset
Talent retention is no longer just on the radar screen, it is now a top priority for corporate executives. And for good reasons. Companies that do not address their retention issues now will likely find themselves in a critical staffing shortage down the road as the war for talent heats up. Those that do will be able to preserve and develop their most valuable asset: their people.
Prioritising Employee Engagement Initiatives
What if your company already pays competitively, has a flexible work arrangement policy, has comprehensive performance management processes, employs effective communication mechanisms and offers a great benefits plan (including pet insurance!), but your engagement and retention levels are not what you want them to be?
Make Yours The Greenest Pasture - Retaining Your Top Talent
Employee turnover can cost companies up to 40% of their annual profit. The financial impact of losing a significant number of high performing and high potential employees can be exponentially higher.
Employer Sponsored Childcare
Smart companies are realising that providing childcare can be good business. It makes sense to provide childcare, or at least support it in some way. The benefits aren't just for parents either. Organisations are finding that childcare can become much more than an expense.
The First Key Element Of Employee Engagement - Recruitment
Behind every exceptionally successful organisation is employee engagement. An organisation can only be a competitive market leader and a driving force in its industry, if it has a team of people who are truly engaged.
The Fourth Key Element Of Employee Engagement - Opportunities
The final element of the employee engagement journey is the creation of opportunities.
The Third Key Element Of Employee Engagement - Relationships
This article looks at the third key element of employee engagement - relationships.
The Second Key Element Of Employee Engagement - Support
In this article, we look at the second of the four elements of the engagement journey - support.
The Business Case Behind Employee Entry And Exit Surveys
Keeping talented employees is a critical success factor given the current skills shortage. Employers need to devise new approaches to retain younger staff as baby boomers retire. The new generation of workers have high expectations in an employment market that lets them be choosy. It's also important to look at ways of keeping older staff, as the pool of younger resources will not be big enough.
Really Appreciate People - Performance Improvement Will Quickly Follow
The business buzz word today is engagement. As a result there is more information about it than we can poke the proverbial stick at. Most of it in my view is nonsense, or so complicated very little happens that is of real value.
Getting Pay Right
The end of the financial year is often the time of year many businesses start to look at salary reviews. Often this is an ad hoc affair with a central budget being the main criteria for what individuals are given.
Passive Recruiting
Limiting your candidate pool to people who are currently actively looking for a new job can actually increase your overall recruitment costs and can put you far behind your competition in hiring top performers, especially if you are replacing a key executive or an open position requiring a unique skill set. As a result, an increasing number of companies are making long-term commitments to include passive recruiting as an integral part of their overall recruiting strategy.
Turning Your Organisation Into A Talent Magnet
Businesses working to hire people with skill sets that are in high demand and short supply need to do more than just post jobs online and cold call potential candidates at their competitors. They must turn their organisations into "talent magnets" - so that highly desired talent continuously seeks employment opportunities at their organisation, because word is out that people love working for the company.
Five Basic Trends For Company-Employee Relationships
Here are five basic trends that may unbalance the company-employee relationship - and all these trends are occurring now.
Reduce Employee Turnover By Simple Everyday Practices
Finders keepers, losers weepers. Here's an interesting statistic: every time you replace an employee, you have a 50% chance of getting someone worse than the one you just lost! And in a small-to-medium business, who can afford that risk?
Selecting The High Performer
Have you ever selected the wrong person for a job? Your candidate interviewed well, their profile was good, but after a few weeks their performance did not live up to their promise. If this has happened to you, you are not alone!
Management Tips To Ensure That Your Good Employees Stay
It is difficult to put a value on maintaining a team of loyal, experienced workers, particularly in the present climate of skills shortages and the looming exit of experienced baby boomers. However most employers would agree that good staff are priceless. So, how do you keep good employees satisfied enough to want to stay in your business?
Writing And Using Job Descriptions
When the subject of recruitment, performance management, training or succession planning comes up, managers are usually forced to concede that a practical statement of what someone has to achieve would be useful.
Job Description - An Example
This job description format encourages a focus on end results and clear measures, or key performance indicators (KPIs), to show when they have been achieved.
Putting Temps To Work
Statistics indicate that around 2.5% of today's workforce is made up of people who are in temporary jobs. Just 10 years ago, that figure was close to 1%.
Using Your Internal Workplace Brand To Attract And Retain
There is evidence showing that the labour market is changing globally, and the impact on the future workplace will be considerable. There's no reason why a workplace shouldn't be considered a brand to help attract and retain staff. But it's easier said than done.
Tips For Keeping Your Most Valuable Staff
Employers can do a number of things to improve staff retention rates in their business.
Minimising Staff Turnover
Minimising staff turnover will benefit your organisation. Replacing staff is a costly process - skills are lost, resources are disrupted and recruiting new personnel takes time and money.
Why You Need To Keep Your Mature Employees In The Business
It is absolutely critical that you find innovative ways of utilising the tremendous source of experienced, loyal, productive human capital you have residing in your business.
Making Mature Age Employment Work
As employers wake up and start competing for mature age workers' talents, the only barrier to making the most of our ageing workforce will be the limitations we impose on ourselves.
Why Will People Work For You?
If you don't have a good answer you are at risk!
Rules Of Engagement
In times of high demand for talent and increasing mobility in bright professionals, the need for their "engagement" is becoming critical.
Plan Now Or Pay Later - Proactive "Talent War" Tips
In this talent shortage age, it's important to include the following four considerations in your planning if you intend to continue to compete effectively for top talent.
Strategies For Retaining Staff
Retaining qualified employees is a challenge all companies face. Having the right staff directly impacts an organisation's ability to maximise productivity and achieve business goals.
IQ Or EQ?
Career success doesn't just rest on how clever you are, but how in touch you are with your own and other's feelings.
Talent Quest
Is Australia doing everything it can to attract and retain increasingly elusive ‘golden-collar workers'?
6 Strategies To Help Your Business Survive The Skills Shortage
Retaining good staff is not all about salary. Employers are going to have to get smarter about the total employment package they are offering their staff, if they want to attract and retain the best people.
Don't Underestimate The Value Of Your Older Employees
One of the greatest challenges facing employers today is how best to prepare for the implications of an ageing workforce, that will have serious ramifications for their business over the next ten years.
Baby Boomers: It's Time To Work On Your Next Career!
Many people in their late forties and early fifties think they are nearing the end of the whole process of developing their careers. Conventional thinking has been that at this age "we can now relax a bit" and "ease down towards retirement".
Winning Hearts And Minds Through Workforce Engagement
Critical positions are in high demand, be they sales people, engineers or nurses. These positions are also increasingly difficult to fill. Based on multiple demographic trends, this problem is not going to get any better any time soon. But it often feels that organisations are chasing the wrong problem.
Attraction And Retention Audit
The lowest unemployment rate since 1976 is a headache for many business owners. The shortage of skilled workers has become the single biggest HR risk. It is a complex problem, however there are a few guidelines we suggest every business follow.
Retention Starts On Day One: Effective On-boarding Programs
Put yourself in your brand new employee's shoes. How welcomed do they feel on their first day on the job? On their third day? What about the third month on the job?
Becoming A Top Employer
It's a big question, but it has to be asked: how do you create a company that's the best possible employer? It seems that all the management experts say the same thing: you have to have highly committed leaders who actually believe, and are passionate about, the rhetoric of employees being their most important asset.
Optimising Human Capital
An organisation is rather like a pipeline for people. We recruit people and feed them in at the start of the pipeline. How long they remain in the pipeline, how effectively they perform and their level of contribution depends on a number of factors, many of which are under the direct control of the people who are responsible for leading the organisation.
Hiring To Get Results
What any manager really needs is personnel that can get RESULTS.
Keeping Contractors Happy
As more traditional work structures disappear, employers face the challenge of managing an external workforce.
Mapping Actual Results
When interviewing, it is very important to take actual results into consideration. That a person has produced in the past, and is able to prove it, is of great importance.
Turning Multigenerational Differences Into Assets
Generation Y, also known as millennials, makes up an estimated 21 percent of the current workforce. In just the last four years, this generation of workers born between 1978 and 1999 has grown from 14 percent of the workforce to 21 percent - nearly 32 million workers1.
Work Needs Age Diversity But Ageism Is Alive And Kicking
Essentially, ageism is bias against a person or group on the grounds of age. Both the young and old, and everyone in between encounter ageism. Age discrimination in all its guises is a universal, highly variable and complex phenomenon.
Locating And Keeping The Best People
In the rave to recruit and retain good staff, many business owners often see themselves outgunned by larger enterprises. But there are ways of levelling the playing field.
Generation Y- Myths Busted
When assessing any different cohort or group, it is important that the differences are not overstated, but nor must we brush over real differences. In dealing with the intergenerational workforce, there are a number of fallacies that are raised that must be addressed.
Generation Y At Work - The Four Big Shifts Of The Workforce
For managers there are four big shifts that have radically redefined the workforce and their recruitment, retention, and training strategies. They are: the ageing population; the transitioning generations; the increasing options for workers; and changing tenure.
Supporting New Staff
Today’s new workforce is changing. For employers, understanding the needs of employees is the first step to connecting with them and keeping them satisfied on the job.
Finders' Keepers: The Secrets To Finding And Keeping The Best Employees
You can tell a lot about a company by the people it keeps.
Don’t Recruit The Best People - Attract Them
Smart leaders don’t recruit the best people, they attract them. Why do they do it? They do it because it makes their lives easier, and their companies more successful.
It’s A Buyer’s Market For Employees
In business over the last five years, as the labour force has tightened up, one of the favourites has been ‘How to become an employer of choice.’
Use Their Natural Gifts
When people are unable to use what they are naturally good at in their role, they are generally bored, frustrated, or both, and therefore don't do their best.
Keep Your Gold Watches - We Want To Work
As the first wave of baby boomers turn 60 this year, the overwhelming message to employers is that members of this huge generation do not want a traditional retirement.
Stepping To Success With The Interview: ‘Winning In The War For Talent’
War - of a sort - is uppermost in the minds of many right now: the war, that is, for talent.
Job Descriptions
Why performance-based job descriptions attract and retain the best staff.
Measuring And Managing Human Capital
Today, the term “human capital” is generating a lot of buzz in corporate boardrooms and human resources departments both large and small.
Keeping High Performers
Employers everywhere want to know how to put in place winning HR practices. These are approaches that create a workplace environment that attracts and retains high-performing employees.
The Behavioural Approach To Interviewing
Once they know how personalities work, individuals and organisations find it easier to effect change. We will cover some of the techniques and skills required to conduct an interview.
Systematic Preparation Vital For Interviewers
The right questions and active listening ensure the process goes well.
Refresh Your Recruiting - Innovative Ways To Succeed In Sourcing
Employers are typically highly reliant on employee referral networks for recruiting fresh talent. While highly popular - and highly effective - employee referral programs can also get stale after a few years. What follows are some ideas, gathered from our recruiting experts, for getting better results.
Expatriate Employment Issues – A Warning For Employers
Employers in many industries are faced with a daunting workplace when you consider skilled labour shortages, according to some reports.
Boom Or Bust - Solutions To Address The Ageing Workforce Crisis
As the impact of the ageing workforce takes hold, business leaders are seeking sustainable age management solutions to attract and retain mature employees in a rapidly shrinking labour market. This article explores ways to help business boom against the backdrop of the most radical demographic shift in history.
How To Prepare Your Business In The Face Of Increasing Skills Shortages
Recruitment is a very serious investment for any business and employing the right staff should always be considered a key business priority.
ERM - The New CRM!
Recruiting the right staff can be a nightmare - not only can it be depressingly time consuming but it can also be a very costly exercise, especially if you get it wrong.
How To Retain Quality Staff
Retention of quality staff is one of the single biggest factors affecting future success in today’s business world. The success of an organisation is very much dependent on their quality employees.
The Positive Power Of The Magnetic Employer
Here’s a question you may not have been asked before. Is your business an
Employee Magnet?
Sales Talent: Shifting The Performance Curve
Achieving tangible business results through the performance and productivity of people (especially salespeople) can be very difficult. There are challenges and opportunities in maximising the value of one of the most valuable assets in your company: your salespeople. Shifting the performance curve of your sales people can drive greater business results quickly and upgrade your overall talent.
Employing Expatriates Strengthens Businesses
Employing people from other countries can often give a company a useful edge, bringing new ideas, techniques and approaches into the business, or accessing specialist skills not available in Australia.
Apprenticeships - A Much Needed Solution To The Skills Crisis
You would have had to have had your head firmly embedded in the sand for the past twelve months if you are unaware that Australia is facing a critical skills shortage.
Make Staff Retention Your Intention
Retention of quality staff is one of the single biggest factors affecting future business success in today’s environment. In particular, the success of an organisation is very much dependent on their “critical employees” – those employees in whom the intellectual capital and corporate memory resides.
Exit Interviews - Make Them Count
Exit interviews are your last chance to gain valuable insights about your organisation from a departing employee. You also have the opportunity to help the employee prepare for their next career move.
Employers: It's Time To Get On The Brandwagon!
Over the last few years Australian industry and commerce have started to embrace Employer Branding as a key tool in the development of their ‘Employer of Choice’ positioning and the subsequent recruitment and retention of the best possible talent.
Give People A Reason To Stay - Providing Direction
Due to the projected shortage of talent there is a need to start taking action now.
Recruitment: How To Hire The Right Person For The Job
To ensure you hire good employees, and avoid potential termination problems, you need to follow a well thought out, systematic and documented process.
The Selection Process: What You Need To Consider For A Better Bet
We have compiled some pointers below on how companies can best fine-tune and integrate their selection practices from a holistic perspective. None of these practices, on their own, will ensure a perfect match every time but, taken together and applied in a systemic fashion, they can raise the odds of hiring a good fit.
Stop The Escape: Attracting And Retaining Staff
CEOs and business brace themselves as the low unemployment rate and increased competition for staff hit home.
A Remarkable Workplace Begins With Unlearning
The primary focus of many businesses is shareholder wealth. The drivers of this (I don’t believe they deserve to be called leaders) fail to understand, or perhaps choose to ignore the fact that, shareholder wealth is one of many possible outcomes of good business practice, not a reason for being in business.
Issues Attracting And Retaining Staff?
In a 2003 study conducted by the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) and the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), 81% of CEO's surveyed rated recruiting and retaining skilled employees as the number one challenge for business in Australia.
Career Development And Employee Commitment
To employees, loyalty means the desire to stay and contribute because they think what the organisation does - and how it does it, is worth their time, experience and creativity. These employees are vital to any organisation dealing with ‘retention and commitment issues’.
Overseas Employment Opportunities For Employers
What big business knows, and many small businesses don’t know, is that subject to specified criteria being met, the Federal Government is quite receptive to employers bringing people in from overseas to work for them for periods ranging from a few days through to permanent. Further, as a result of recently announced initiatives, it is now easier for regional businesses, both large and small, to take advantage of the benefits of overseas skilled labour.
Retaining A Commited Workforce
Given the current war for talent - a war that is set to intensify in its ferocity in the next few years - organisation alignment experts, Corporate Alignment, look at what it takes to keep employees committed to their workplace. The nationwide commitment study (which formed part of a broader organisation alignment investigation) involved over 3,500 employees - from frontline staff through to senior management and CEOs.
Managing People - And The Costs
Good employees will make you money. A poor employee will cost you – a lot. Let’s assume you have the wrong employee and they are being paid $50,000pa. Their manager is being paid $100,000. This employee has to leave.
Become An Employer Of Choice - Offer Salary Packaging
Employer of Choice - current marketplace jargon for businesses that wish to, not only attract new quality employees, but retain the quality employees they have.
A New Challenge For Employers
While employers are increasingly recognising and responding to the work preferences of Generation Xs, a new generation with its own set of characteristics is joining the workforce.
Getting The Right People - People Who Fit
The article "Are People Your Most Important Asset? - Not Necessarily!" discussed "getting the right people on the bus" before deciding where to drive it. A key factor in getting the right people is understanding what competencies we are looking for and how to find out if someone has these.
The Right Person In The Right Job
How can you appoint the 'right-person-to-the-right-job', every time?
Providing Reasons To Stay
Well designed incentives.
Unleashing The Potential Of The Ageing Workforce
Every year an increasing proportion of workers retire. How are you going to keep your older workers?
How To Find Good Sales People
One of the most challenging and least understood aspects of sales management is recruiting.
Contracting - The Best Of Both Worlds
Contracting can best be described as a “de facto” relationship that many modern couples share. The ultimate try before you buy! Rather than jumping into the long-term commitment of marriage you can live together to see if it’s got that magic spark for both parties. It’s also a double-edged sword. As there is no commitment either can pull out of the arrangement.
Being Competitive With Pay - Linking To The Market
Having looked at an effective salary system and establishing the internal relativities of the job, we now need to determine the levels of payment for each position.
Effective Induction - More Than Showing Them The Lunch Room
Induction or orientation to the work place typically involves showing the new employee around, telling them about the organisation and showing them where they will be working - if it happens at all.
Intelligent, Adaptable People + Cultural Fit = Sky's The Limit!
Choosing the right employee for your organisation can be very difficult.
Setting 'Expectations Of Success' For That New Employee
While "throwing them in the deep end" might sound challenging for a new employee, it can be a careless way to treat your new investment. We recently heard of a new employee calling his wife at lunchtime on his first day in the new job to say he was coming home. The treatment, or lack of it, he received told him he had made the wrong choice.
Values Make A Difference In Securing The Best Fit CEO
New tool helps to avoid company culture mismatch.
While your potential new CEO’s competencies and experience look good on paper, have you asked yourself whether they really represent the best ‘fit’ with your company’s culture?
How To Minimise Recruitment Mistakes
It does not always prove easy to attract, identify and select the most qualified candidate for a specific job?
Do They Know What You Want? - Job Descriptions And How To Make Them Work
"They know what I want. We don't need to write it down." is often the response when the issue of the dreaded job description comes up. Most of the time, when asked, the poor employee is left guessing as to what the boss wants.
Staff Psychological Assessment Profiling
Psychological assessment profiling is being used more and more as a tool for recruiting and selecting appropriate people for major project management or career development.
Headhunting - Making It Work For You?
Executive search found its beginnings in post World War II America. What started as a sector dominated by older men drawing upon their pre-war contacts, has grown to become a lucrative global industry.
Recruitment - Getting It Right More Often
The Accounts Clerk had resigned and the Administration Manager leapt into action and placed an advertisement in the local paper for a replacement. Two weeks of frenzied résumé reading and interviews followed and a suitable replacement was found.
How To Find The Round Pegs - Finding The People That Fit
Terminating a senior manager can be an expensive and embarrassing process.
Is It Worth Kicking And Fighting And Scratching For Employee Loyalty?
Is loyalty a competitive edge, or something to be discouraged in an age of an increasingly mobile work force?
Retaining Key Staff - Can You Afford Not To?
Finding and keeping good people is always a major concern for employers. And if you are not trying to retain everybody you currently have – why are you employing them?
Retention Is The Name Of The New Game
Signs of a job market recovery can be expected after the first quarter of the New Year and it will be the executive ranks leading the way.
An Executive Lesson In Demand And Supply
Smart companies are planning for an upturn in the economy by taking their pick of the top executives in a market heavily favouring employers.
Organizational Loyalty And Commitment
Corporate loyalty and commitment are in short supply these days for good reason.
Seven Suggestions For Sensational Staff
Quite often when I'm out stumping the speaking circuit a boss with a problem corners me. The problem - "How can I keep my good staff?" and they want an instant solution.
Hiring Strategically - What To Look For
Two important employee characteristics to look for in prospective candidates are values and behaviours. These two characteristics are often the most difficult to discern.
Is Your Business Capable Of Attracting And Keeping Today's Graduates
Gain valuable information from the perspective of graduates.
Management Contracting
Highly experienced managers are difficult to find or attract to long term assignments - contracting is a solution.
Effective Recruitment and Selection Practices
Every organisation employs exactly the people it deserves, but not necessarily the people it wants. The people organisations employ is the result of the recruitment and selection practices it uses.