Helping your business grow: How to attract and keep the best talent for the job

Your business success and growth are directly linked to your employees. Small business owners need employees who are dedicated, reliable and who have a positive mind set, especially when times may get tough.

Business owners should look for employees who will help them meet their current and future business goals and whose skills, knowledge, expertise and qualifications will help the business grow

How can you make sure you attract the right people for the job?

Business owners can persuade potential candidates to work for them by:

1. Offering a market-related salary;
2. Offering employee benefits; and
3. Offering career progression.

Employee benefits may include life and disability cover – essential insurance products that employees need. Remember, employees want to grow too. As a small business you may be able to identify and offer potential opportunities for growth that prospective employees will value.

How can you keep your best employees?

Once you’ve attracted and secured the best employees for your business, you need to incentivise them to stay the course with you. These five factors stimulate loyalty among employees:

1. Leadership: employees look up to you as their leader and will be watching how you act in different situations – so lead by example.
2. Appreciation: employees want you to value them for the work that they do.
3. Good communication and engagement between management and employees.
4. A positive and encouraging company culture.
5. Employee incentive programmes which reward employee performance. This ensures that your employees do high-quality work to benefit from the incentives.

How can businesses use technology to attract and retain talent?

Technology can also help businesses attract the best people for the job. Candidates often go to business websites or social media pages to get an idea of the culture, values and mission of the company.

You can also use technology to train and develop your employees, which shows a willingness to invest in their futures. In their day-to-day tasks, employees can become more efficient when they use up-to-date and reliable technology.

What does the future workforce look like?

The workforce of today looks nothing like that of the past. And, with the rise of computer systems performing and learning tasks that usually needed human intelligence, as well as the rapid move towards the gig economy (short-term employment or freelance work), the future workforce is set to morph into something completely different.

There are different factors changing the workplace and affecting HR recruitment strategies, such as:

• Millennials who have different work expectations
• The rise of contingent workers, defined as outsourced or non-permanent
• Shifting work boundaries.

What are the skills needed to create an agile workforce; one with diverse knowledge and skills to adapt to a changing business environment?

Benefits of a business diagnostic tool

The diagnostic tool benefits your business by:

• Making you aware of the areas that need to be developed further;
• Giving your business access to a network of providers at preferential rates; and
• Promoting business growth through positive behaviour changes as you continue to engage with partners that can help your business thrive.

What are the skills needed to create an agile workforce; one with diverse knowledge and skills to adapt to a changing business environment?

Discovery Insure CEO Anton Ossip says, “One of the most important things needed to create an agile workforce is identifying, hiring, developing and retaining employees who work well in changing environments. People who can adapt to change, learn new skills and work on various different projects.”

To do this, businesses may consider employing a more fluid workforce consisting of freelancers and contract employees or have more fluidity within teams in the business. Businesses can also create flexible career options rather than strictly defined job roles and develop a “learning organisation” that allows employees to learn new skills that they can use on future projects and assignments.

For your business to succeed in the ever-changing world of work, you need to know how to attract, nurture and retain a talent pool of reliable and agile employees that will help your business grow from strength to strength. Your employees are after all an asset that can make all the difference to the success of your business.