Retain New Employees by Tapping their Job Skills

Retain New Employees by Tapping their Job Skills Retain New Employees by Tapping their Job Skills Retain New Employees by Tapping their Job Skills By Roberta Matuson Congratulations! Youve recruited a great new hire. Having just successfully gone through the hiring process, you can attest to the fact that its not such an easy thing to do these days. Heres how to ensure your recruitingeffort pays off for years to come as you retain new employees. Evaluate the job skills of your new hire Everyone puts their best foot forward during the recruitment process, which means its not uncommon for a bit of job skill inflation to occur, particularly as candidates fast approach the finishing line. Assessing the job skills of a new hirewill enable you to assign the proper level of work. Be sure to assign appropriate work to help ensure that your new employee is neither overwhelmed nor bored in their new job. This one move will get you off to a great start with your new hire. Tap into the potential of your new hire As more and moreMillennials and Gen Z workers enter the workforce, the days of seniority-based opportunities become a thing of the past. If employees do not feel challenged, especially Millennial talent, they are likely to move on to a fresh opportunity. Its important to manage your new talent early on. If they can handle the additional workload, continue to introduce new assignments that tap their skills. Be sure to regularly check in to maintain a reasonable balance of assignments and expectations. Develop the job skills of your new hire Both career development and job skill development rank high on the list of what todays Millennial employees want from their employers. These workers want to see career progression within an organization. The continuous mastering of job skills is needed to move up the career ladder in any business. Enable your new hires to grasp the job skills required for future career growth. Be willing to provide access to training and coaching, so they can obtain the job skills necessary for promotion. Helping your new hires to develop their job skills is a win-win situation. Theyll be able to take on more responsibility, which in turn will free you up to handle matters that require your expertise. Doing so will also make your recruitment process easier, encouraging Millennials to consider your company in their job search, as you increase employee retention. Look within before hiring from the outside Leaders often make assumptions about their workers that in many cases turn out to be a misconception. For example, consider how the skills of an administrative assistant can be applied to a different role in the organization. Avoid overlooking a well-qualified internal candidate with the right job skills for a new role in the organization. One way to tap the skills of your current workforce is to take inventory of their job skills. This process can be as simple as creating an Excel spreadsheet and asking your employees to list their job skills along with their proficiency. Alternately, some payroll services or human resource information systems can track your employees job skills, with modules specifically built for tracking job skill development. Be sure your departments are properly staffed Youve spent a lot of time and energy recruiting your new hire. The last thing you want to do is lose them because they are doing the work of two or more people. If indeed an area has more work than the staff can handle, consider bringing in temporary staffing until such time as you can fully staff the rest of your department. Alternately, you can also shift work to another department until your recruitment process catches up with the demand you have for additional staff. Consider outsourcing some of the work while recruiting additional new hires. Be a great role model One of the best ways to encourage the new hire that youve recently recruited, or any hire for that matter, is to be a great role model. Share some of the many ways you are continuing to build your own job skills. For example, invite your new hire to join you at an association meeting that will be a job skill builder for both you and your employee. Let employees know about online courses that will improve their soft skills or technical expertise. As your staffs skills grow, so too will employee retention, employee satisfaction and worker productivity. Your reputation as a great employer will also grow, which will make your ability to recruit a new hire the next time around, that much easier.