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Nowadays, it is very difficult to get skilled employees to work for you. Unfortunately, top talent is hard to come by and there are a lot of companies who are trying to grab them before you do. Companies are facing many difficulties when hiring new employees since younger people tend to see them as stepping stones. Therefore, it is important to create a learning culture within your company that allows employees to grow and continue to stay engaged.
The Challenges of Attracting Top Talent
Attracting talented employees to your company comes with a couple of challenges. Since highly skilled people have many options, they will weigh out their options and choose the company that best suits them. Companies, nowadays, have to deal with being a stepping stone to a better opportunity, as well as other challenges.
Standing Out from Other Employers
During more difficult times, companies had a lot of power. This meant that they could sift through many talented potential employees to pick the best ones. Nowadays, the reverse is going on. There are a lot of companies looking for qualified employees. This can be especially difficult for smaller businesses that do not have the name of a big corporation. If you want to hire the best people for the job, it is important to stand out.
Being Seen as A “Stepping stone”
Younger employees tend to see their first job as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, this leads to many companies building up an employee’s experience and him or her leaving as soon as something better comes along.
This means that younger people will be more likely to work at your company for a few years, rather than stay and help your business grow. To solve this problem, you need to continually give employees room to grow financially within the company. This can be done by establishing annual raises or even creating a mentoring program for them to build new skills.
Build An Appealing Employer Brand
A good way to stand out from other employers is to create an employer brand. It is important to promote and create a good company culture and sell what you have to offer them. It is not just about the salary; it is also about the learning experience and how you can help the employee grow professionally.
A good way to put your brand out there is through social media. Online you can post about company events, different perks that employees get, and get people excited to work for you.
Creating Positive Employee Experiences
For your company to not be seen as a stepping stone, it is important to create positive employee experiences. Not only should employees feel like they can grow within the company, but they should also feel like they are having a good overall experience. Additionally, this helps your credibility as an employer.
If people who are working for you enjoy their job, they are more likely to tell others, who might also be interested in working at your company. It is important that employees are happy, otherwise, they are likely to look for another job and leave.
What Does Top Talent Look for In a New Job?
In a recent study, Gallup showed what employees are looking for when working at a company. As the world is becoming more remote, people can think more about their life choices and want to create a better life for themselves. Therefore, we are seeing a shift in what employees expect from a job.
Nowadays, employees are looking for more than just a good salary. It is important, for many people, that there is a purpose and that they are doing meaningful work. Rather than wanting to be satisfied, employees are looking for development, they want to grow and become more skilled as they spend more time in the company.
Additionally, rather than a boss, talent wants to work with someone who is a coach. This means they want someone willing to communicate rather than give orders and helps them learn important skills for the job. Similarly, people want ongoing conversations to get immediate feedback, rather than annual reviews.
Nowadays, employees want to build relationships, make their job part of their life, rather than just being a job separate from who they are at home.
Why An Internal Mentorship Program Will Fill Your Talent Pipeline
Mentoring programs are a great way to integrate new employees into a company's culture.
But more and more, it's actually becoming a recruiting tactic, not just an onboarding tool, says Jennifer Petrela, a mentoring expert at Mentorship Quebec, a Mentorship Accelerator supported by the Quebec government.
Here's a clip from her conversation with Together’s Director of Marketing, Brittany Hendricks, where they discussed inclusive mentoring and how to connect more women with mentors in male-dominated workplaces.
Employees Will Achieve Their Goals by Joining Your Company
Mentorships allow employees to learn skills that they did not learn before, which helps them achieve personal goals that would not be possible without learning experiences. Additionally, this learning method allows employees to have a more hands-on approach and learn from mentors who have been working with those skills for many years.
This helps employees feel like you are investing in them and they are getting something important out of it that helps them become better employees and well-rounded individuals.
Employees Will Have Valuable Face-To-Face Time with Leaders
With mentorships, employees will not only learn new skills that their mentors teach them face-to-face, but they will also learn communication skills among themselves, both the mentee and the mentor. This face-to-face time also gives employees time with people in higher positions to learn more about their jobs and their skills.
Additionally, this creates a direct line between junior and senior employees to learn more about each other, which leads to better leadership. While big companies tend to be very bureaucratic and senior employees tend to have little to no contact with junior-level ones, mentorships can be a big factor as to why people might want to work for you.
Mentorship Programs Show Candidates That You Value Internal Mobility
Mentoring programs allow the mentee to learn new skills that will allow them to continue to grow within the company. On the other hand, the mentor will become even more of an expert in his or her skills and continue to grow as well. In a study, both mentees and mentors were promoted five times more than people who were not in mentorship programs.
Additionally, both parties were 20 percent more likely to get a raise than those who were not enrolled in a mentorship program.
Expands Employee Networks
As mentioned before, mentorships allow one-on-one time between senior and junior employees. This allows both junior and senior employees to build relationships and expand their networks.
Not only is this helpful for them to feel like they are a part of the company, but it is also good for everyone to understand each other and make empathetic decisions while doing their job. These kinds of connections will span their entire employee life cycle. Additionally, mentorship programs allow leaders to get a perspective of what the junior employee’s experience is and vice versa.
As remote work becomes more popular, mentorships also allow employees to talk to each other more and meet each other, since there is no face-to-face time anymore. Additionally, mentorships can also connect people from different departments to learn each other’s skills and perspectives.
Offers Continuous Learning Opportunities
Employees tend to think highly of companies that continuously give them learning opportunities. This is because people want to feel like the company is investing as much time in them as they are. You can combine mentorships and courses, so employees can learn new skills in a variety of ways. Additionally, this can help employees who prefer a more hands-on approach to go mainly for mentorships rather than theory courses that can take many weeks.
Builds A Culture of Learning
Mentoring programs create a culture of learning within your company. This is important because it allows your company to adapt to change, engage employees, and perform better than other companies. Essentially, the more skilled and well-rounded your employees are, the more successful your company will continue to be.
Mentorships do not have to be only between leaders and junior employees. Younger employees can teach senior employees new technology to continue keeping your company modern and up to today’s standards.
Additionally, the more engaged your employees are, the more likely they are to stay in the company since they feel like it is something worth the time they invest because they are growing professionally.
How To Automate Your Mentorship Program
Together allows you to build one-on-one or group mentoring programs. You can create custom registration questions that allow for the best employee pairing, add branding, and create your curriculum for any program. With together, you can manage registrations and get insight into how a program did once it is done. Book a demo and try Together to make mentorships a part of your learning culture.
