Are your managers being rewarded for holding back top talent?

The experience that candidates and existing employees have with your business at every touchpoint and throughout every interaction, can impact your ability to attract and win top talent. 

During a recent Michael Page event, Mervyn Dinnen, multi-award-winning author, blog writer and HR tech influencer, highlighted that companies today need to ensure that from the minute there is a job ad, to years after someone has left the business, employees are experiencing one seamless journey. Ultimately, if people have a positive experience with your brand they will always be an ambassador, and the same also goes for potential, current and past employees.  

Mervyn has worked with several organisations to produce research papers, white papers, and insights on talent, which has also seen him consult some companies on how to improve their marketing strategies.

“The concept of the employee journey being from attention to retention and beyond, means they have a relationship with you before there's even a job and then continue to have a relationship with you after they've left,” Mervyn commented. 

He then pointed out that: “It’s not the retention of people, it's retention of the relationship, because they can come back and work.” 

What this links back to is the desire for people to develop their careers. People move roles to gain new experience and skills, but they can always come back and they can also refer customers and future candidates to your business.

How internal mobility can improve your hiring strategy

In such a competitive market, Mervyn believes it is important to understand the concept of internal mobility; that people can move around the organisation, leave and come back. “This is vitally important because the number one thing that people look for when they join a company is the chance to learn, grow and develop. It's the number one reason people join and the number one reason they stay. Therefore, you need to be able to offer them that.”

Because the nature of work is now much more dispersed, there should be more flexibility around how people work within businesses. “People can be in the organisation, but working across teams, functions, disciplines, and borders. People want the opportunity to do different things and the next step in their development might be a different role within the same organisation.” 

Despite this, most job seekers have flagged that they find it easier to get a job with a different company than to make a move in their current organisation. The reason being is that professionals can’t let it be known that they're thinking of making a move because of the way managers are rewarded. 

“Rewards drive behaviours and most managers in organisations are rewarded for having high performing teams,” Mervyn said. “High performers tend to be the people who want to move on the quickest, but managers typically hold onto their high performers. 

“What we need to do is reward managers for being producers. For enabling and developing very good people who contribute to the organisation as a whole, as opposed to developing people who contribute solely to their team. And as a mindset, it goes back to the way we reward people. It goes back to the kind of managers we hire and promote.”

Your managers are key in retaining your talent

Businesses need to look at their management teams and determine whether they have the right people to help drive the business forward. People who can nurture, develop, enable, and support their employees.

It is also important to remember that while part of the challenge is the way we currently reward managers for the success of their teams, it is equally important to consider the way we choose managers based on the values they possess. 

From research that explored the values job seekers look for in a manager, Mervyn highlighted that from 14,000 responses, the two that came out on top were accountability and honesty. Things like decisiveness, optimism and confidence were much lower down. 

“Professionals want to be managed by people who are going to be honest, who they feel they can trust, who they know will be accountable if they get it wrong and will be rewarded if they get it right. They want people managers who can be coaches, mentors, and help them develop.”

These managers are the people who can say: “You've got a great opportunity in the business somewhere else. You’ve done really well here in my team, but the business needs you in the other team”. 

Coaching and mentoring are often called soft skills, but these skills are quite difficult to master. Assessing, choosing and promoting managers based their full set of skills will be key.

If you would like to explore how we can support you in finding the right talent, get in touch with your local Michael Page office today. Alternatively, you can access our comprehensive guide to assessing candidates in an interview here for practical advice on how to assess key soft skills.

Beverly Nicholas

Regional Talent Director, PageGroup