If you want your organization to succeed and maximize profitability, you need to find the best possible candidates to work for it. But finding the best candidates can be hard; it's hard to know who is a good candidate, it's hard to reach them when you find them, and even if you can reach them, they may not be interested in working for your organization.
Certain pieces of this puzzle are destined to remain major challenges, especially if you're hiring candidates in a field where there is an active labor shortage. However, if you're able to make your workplace more impressive to prospects generally, you can resolve many issues simultaneously.
The question is, how do you do it?
The Value of a More Attractive Workplace
Making your workplace more attractive, and promoting those attractive elements, can help you in a few different ways:
- More applicants. When you have a more attractive workplace, you're going to earn more applicants naturally. You can cut back on recruiting, advertising, and outreach efforts and instead rely on a natural, inbound pipeline of interested applicants.
- Better candidates. On top of that, you're likely to attract and retain better candidates. The best people in the industry want to work for the best businesses in that industry; if you make the workplace more attractive, you could persuade them to change jobs or look for new career development opportunities in your organization.
- More accepted offers. You'll also be much more likely to have your job offers accepted. The candidates who do apply for your jobs will be much more interested in those jobs, and your top recruits will be much more likely to respond positively to your offers.
How to Make Your Workplace More Impressive to Prospects
So what steps can you take to make your workplace more impressive to prospects?
- Improve workplace safety. One of the best things you can do is improve workplace safety, as this can make employees feel much more secure in working for you – in addition to helping your business avoid costly fines and liabilities. There are many strategies you can use to improve workplace safety, but the most important is to build a safety culture and take safety seriously. Instill good leaders who make safety a top priority, provide plenty of personal protective equipment (PPE) when necessary, educate and train your employees, and use a combination of rewards and disciplinary action to facilitate safer behaviors. As your safety standards increase, your organization will become much more attractive.
- Establish a consistent organizational culture. Similarly, it's important to establish a consistent organizational culture. The nuances of that culture don't need to fit a specific mold; what's important is that your brand has a distinguished identity that can adequately attract people who feel like they belong in an organization with that identity. If you have a consistent set of core values that your target audience appreciates, you'll be much more likely to find the candidates you need.
- Increase pay and/or benefits. One easy way to make your jobs more attractive is to increase the pay or benefits associated with those jobs. Not every business has the budget to increase pay as much as candidates would like, but if you're struggling with revenue at the moment, you can substitute better and more flexible benefits. Consider enabling employees to work remotely at will or offering extra days off to sweeten the deal.
- Make the environment more attractive. The work environment itself should also be attractive to people who want to work in it. Better furniture, better break rooms, and even more navigable structures can all make employees feel more welcomed and more comfortable.
- Reward your team. Take the time and money to reward your team when they accomplish a goal or achieve something notable. It's going to build camaraderie, increase employee morale, and improve retention rates, but it's also going to bode well for future candidates. If job prospects meet with team members, and those team members seem very happy, candidates will be much more likely to accept your offers.
- Make the application process easier. You'll get more applications if you make the application process easier. Make it fast and simple for candidates to submit their information and be transparent so prospects know exactly where they stand in the review process.
- Rebuild your onboarding process. Follow through matters. After you hire a new candidate, guide them through a consistent, welcoming onboarding process so they know exactly what they're getting into. This is also an excellent opportunity to reinforce your brand culture and organizational values.
- Remain open to communication. Keep your business open to communication from prospects, employees, and even the general public. Transparency and open communication are indispensable for improving your brand reputation.
- Do good. Increasingly, people want to work for ethical, responsible, and sustainable organizations. If you improve your organization to comply with these values and spend more time and money on volunteer efforts, you'll naturally attract better candidates.
- Promote yourself. Finally, make sure you promote your brand and all the efforts you've made to make the workplace better. People won't know how good your workplace is, or even that it exists, unless you share that information.
Getting Feedback
If you're still struggling, or if you want to improve further, get as much feedback as possible.
- Existing employees. Use surveys, preferably anonymous ones, to gauge employee sentiments and get ideas for how to improve your workplace further.
- Job candidates. If and when job candidates withdraw from consideration, follow up with them and ask why. You might be surprised to hear the answers.
- Exit interviewees. When utilized properly, exit interviews can be incredibly valuable for your organization. Ask departing candidates how the workplace could have been improved.
With these strategies, you should be able to make your workplace much more attractive and impressive to job candidates. The path to this goal isn't always straightforward, but if you're willing to remain flexible and experiment with various changes to your organization, you'll eventually achieve your goals.