Dean Johns, CPA, CFP®, and Chris Brennan, CFP®, both principals of John D. Dovich & Associates, LLC, recently met with Tina Taylor, SHRM-SCP, President and Becky Falvey, Senior Talent Management Advisor of HR Elements, LLC to discuss employee attraction and retention and the factors involved in getting and keeping good employees.
DEAN JOHNS: Tina and Becky, thank you for joining us today. Can you give us some background on your company and the services you provide to your clients?
TINA TAYLOR: Our firm, HR Elements, LLC is a human resources advisory firm dedicated to delivering tailored employee solutions that enable clients to build an engaged and productive workforce. We become their outsourced HR team. We started serving the Cincinnati market over 10 years ago, expanded to Greater Dayton in 2017 and Louisville/Lexington in 2018.
BECKY FALVEY: We have a highly experienced team of HR-certified advisors that offer on-site support to our clients. We find this offers our clients the biggest impact because working on-site allows us to understand the leadership style and culture of our client’s organization. Our business model is different in that we take on the HR workload and allow the CEO, CFO, or COO to focus on their work, which is operating and growing their business.
TINA TAYLOR: Our company serves family and privately-owned businesses. We don’t typically work with large corporate-owned firms. We function as an extension of the client—providing a variety of support services, some of which include employee relations, recruitment and selection, employee onboarding, and coaching. We are performance-driven; meaning, our support services are designed and implemented to drive performance for
our clients.
CHRIS BRENNAN: With your experience in HR, and the work you’ve done with employers, why has employee retention emerged as such a hot topic in the workplace?
TINA TAYLOR: That’s a really good place to start the conversation. First and foremost, employee retention begins with the employee experience – the way an employee experiences an organization. An employee’s experience drives his/her connection to a job, to a manager, and ultimately, to a company. The financial impact of turnover is significant, especially in today’s market, where the conditions create a slow and challenging process to find a replacement. Right now, we’re seeing first year turnover increase across businesses. First year exits only exacerbate the financial impact in that a business is essentially spending TWICE for the same hire—this is particularly true in entry level hiring. This trend may be a factor of generational differences, as the largest generation in the workforce today is Millennial, yet often times, the management team may be Gen X or Boomer generations. The dynamic of generational differences often creates disconnects that can lead to a lack of employee engagement. The fact is that if employees don’t have an experience that they connect with, and aren’t engaged, they will leave. Today’s market only makes it easier for employees to exit.
DEAN JOHNS: What strategies do you use with your clients to deter those trends?
TINA TAYLOR: We help our clients better engage with their workforce – building relationships with their employees, creating value for their employees through growth and development, and ultimately driving an employee experience that attracts and retains top talent.
Another way we help our clients to engage and retain talent is through helping them hire right in the first place. We offer a full suite of talent acquisition services, from job profiles to sourcing strategies, all the way through onboarding. One area of recruitment we’re seeing our clients challenged with right now is sourcing. We know that in order to hire right in today’s market, clients need to identify and/or create “new” candidate pools. For some, that means focusing on the candidate’s competence versus strictly the resume. In the past, employers may have been more focused on the “right” resume—screening out capabilities or competence in favor of what was listed on a piece of paper. Today, employers have to be open to “new” candidate profiles – a non-traditional career path or a non-traditional educational background, for example. If employers focus on hiring for fit through strong interviewing practices, the right candidate will emerge, regardless of the pool they came from. Opening new talent pools only increases the odds of hiring right by providing multiple options for one role.