Hiring & Retaining

• Consider your employees before your customers.  Not only will the employee put out a far better performance due to feeling respected, but your company will also build a reputation as being “the company to work for”, which will attract other, good employees.

• Be flexible. Constraints in the office constrain creativity and work performance. Go for casual clothing, if possible. Let your employee decide when it’s time to eat and take a break. Be flexible on your employee’s schedule, catering to his or her personal needs. The employee will show appreciation in return, by supplying a good output of production.

• Hire nice people. Not one customer in the world, no matter what business you are in, enjoys service from someone with less-than-appreciative attitude. And, your other employees will not enjoy working with them either, bringing down moral and production drastically. This kind of person will not be willing to strive at contributing to your company; they will strive to contribute only to themselves.

• Consider the unconventional when interviewing an employee. The more often you can set a scenario that a potential employee will not expect or could find to be an unusual method of interviewing, the better. It will give you a chance to see what that person is really capable of, as a person.

• Let your employee job hop and provide an opportunity to let them do it within your company, instead of having to go outside the company. More than likely, if they can’t do it in the company, they will venture outside to a place that they can. Take advantage of the multiple skills your people can learn within the company. This not only helps your company out, it gives the employee a feeling of more purpose and he or she will enjoy not having to go far to expand their skills.

• Keep your people in mind when it comes to information on where the company is headed and what it is doing. If the employee does not feel informed on what is happening, they will not feel as though they are part of the company and, therefore, will not want to stay, in the long run.

• Get to know what your people want, when they first enter the organization and periodically throughout their tenure. People’s motives and desires change. The good employer is the one that can keep up with those changes. Offer feedback methods and make sure you act on the results.

Above all, remember what it was that got you that good employee in the first place. The concepts mentioned in this article that enable an employer to attain a good employee to begin with are basically the same principals of retaining them as well. It’s that simple. Anyone who works for a company that considers their needs, is just, and can remain flexible, as well as provides other good employees to work alongside, will want to continue working in that company. Hiring and retaining good employees goes hand in hand.