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A strong HR team is key to attracting top talent, as they play a pivotal role in establishing a company culture and workplace that supports employee needs and expectations. This is particularly important in today’s business world, where these needs have significantly evolved following the onset of remote work. However, with the rapidly increasing competition for top talent, finding skilled HR professionals is only the first obstacle — retaining your existing HR talent is also a major challenge you must be prepared to navigate.
According to HR Dive, 4 in 5 HR professionals would leave their jobs due to burnout, feeling undervalued, or lacking the tools and resources to do their job well.
To focus efforts on retaining your best HR talent, you must constantly design and implement strategies to keep these employees happy. While many common retention strategies are primarily implemented by HR teams for non-HR workers, companies must ask themselves if they have retention strategies established for their HR employees.
Why is HR talent retention important?
HR professionals are key to guaranteeing the success of a company. They have the skills and training to help organizations thrive in a global business world.
HR professionals ensure companies achieve their strategic objectives by managing the wellbeing and overall happiness of talent, fostering employee development and engagement, and building a positive culture within the organization.
What do HR professionals need to stay?
To better design a plan to engage and retain HR talent, it is necessary to understand their needs.
As with most employees, HR professionals prioritize learning and growth opportunities. They want to work for employers that offer professional development opportunities focusing on competencies such as relationship management, communication, and business acumen.
Although compensation is one of the top reasons HR talent looks for a new job, career advancement is second. HR professionals are ambitious and very likely to pursue higher positions, so if they experience career progression, they are 20 percent more likely to stay.
HR employees want to feel valued for their contributions to the success of the organization. This includes recognition and fair payment for the time and work they dedicate to the company. Following the onset of remote work, employees, including HR professionals, also place a much greater emphasis on working for companies that support work-life balance and their general wellbeing.
Strategies to retain HR talent
Knowing what your HR talent values is the first step, but you must complement this knowledge with regular actions that address their needs and keep them engaged and motivated.
Here are four strategies to help you retain your HR talent.
1. Create a memorable onboarding experience
A memorable onboarding experience is crucial to make employees feel they are an integrated part of the organization.
The onboarding experience doesn’t end after the employee’s first day — it has ongoing impacts that can be the difference between a long, successful tenure with a company, and a quick resignation. A fruitful onboarding can also help reduce the time it takes for employees to feel acclimated and productive — this is important, as it can take up to two years for an employee to be fully productive. Therefore, making your new HR hires feel part of the company from the beginning can significantly improve retention.
How to get it right:
• Provide employees with educational resources that familiarize them with the role, performance expectations, and responsibilities.
- Clearly communicate company protocols and best practices.
- Provide access to digital tools that enhance virtual communication, such as video conferencing platforms and chat applications. Ensure they are trained on how to use these tools to ensure they’re fully leveraging them.
- Schedule regular one-on-one meetings to check in and answer any questions they may have.
- Offer your new hires a “buddy” from another department with experience at the company to guide them through their first couple of weeks.
2. Choose the right leaders
Choosing experienced and passionate team leaders is essential to retain talent. Research shows that 82 percent of employees leave their job because they don’t have a strong leader who supports them.
How to get it right:
- Look for well trained, skilled leaders and managers with experience coaching employees to bring out their best and leverage their individual strengths.
- Hire business leaders who are positive, assertive, and collaborative. They should understand the importance of valuing each employee’s contributions and fostering a culture based on trust.
- Team leaders should set clear goals and know how to balance providing support and allowing employees to achieve these goals autonomously.
3. Invest in career development and learning opportunities
Lack of professional development opportunities is one of the key causes of high turnover rates. In fact, one out of five employees say they would leave their job for one with more learning opportunities.
When employees are encouraged and supported by their company to learn and grow professionally, the organization benefits in the form of increased productivity, employee loyalty, and a positive brand reputation in the competitive marketplace.
How to get it right
- Encourage employees to reserve time for active learning, such as participating in trainings, workshops, and courses — both internal and external opportunities. It’s also useful to provide access to educational tools like LinkedIn Learning.
- Schedule knowledge-sharing sessions where your employee can learn from a more experienced team member in a higher-level role or with similar career aspirations. Afterwards, discuss what they’ve learned and how to enhance their career plan with this new advice in mind.
- Give employees who have shown interest in a new area — regardless of whether it’s within the HR department or not — the opportunity to participate in related projects. This will show them that the company cares about their career path and that you support them. Remember, it’s better to move top talent to a different internal role than to lose them entirely.
- Support HR professionals who want to earn talent management and human resource certifications. This will ultimately ensure they are better equipped to achieve organizational goals.
4. Offer incentives
Offering incentives is an effective way to recognize that work has been done well. Studies show that 85 percent of workers are more motivated to do their best when they are offered incentives.
How to get it right:
- Offer anything from monetary incentives, such as referral programs, bonuses, or salary increases, to wellness rewards, such as gym memberships or free subscriptions to applicable apps.
- A simple but impactful way to reward high-performing employees is to acknowledge their successes via company- or team-wide emails or chat groups.
- Give employees the opportunity to work on a desired project of larger scope compared to what they have been working on to show them that you notice their enhanced skills and trust them to take on tasks of greater significance.
Retaining HR talent is not an easy task, but it is crucial for the success of your organization.
As you focus on retaining your top HR talent through these helpful strategies, leverage Globalization Partners’ AI-driven Global Growth Platform™ to simplify recruiting, hiring, and managing your global teams — all while reducing cost and risk.
Contact us and learn how we can help!
For more on this topic, check out our Infographic: Rally for Retention: Retain Your Top Global Talent.
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