How to Optimize the ROI of your New Recruits
Strategies for Success: A Guide to Maximizing Return on Investment through Effective Onboarding and Talent Integration
ROI (Return on Investment) is usually calculated by evaluating the output as compared to the input in relation to the investment of money. Apart from the money, one invests, other costs include time and efforts which are not quantifiable in money terms and thus is usually ignored. While we will highlight what you can do to optimize the ROI of new recruits within your organization in money terms, we will also focus our attention on alternate costs involved and how eliminating those costs will help improve the efficiency of your key executives.
Many HR departments and employers are already familiar with today’s young employee trends. Younger employees today tend to job hop more frequently. Looking at the statistics of the Bureau of labor’s “Employee Tenure Summary – 2014” (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm), you will notice that the median tenure of salaried workers is around 4.4 years. This tenure period has been constantly declining and today’s tendencies indicate that it will further decline to reach 3 years or lower in 2020.
There are various reasons for this decline, however, they are out of the scope of this article. We like to look at this trend as an opportunity for both recruiting and leading. While you will have (at the back of your mind) worries about how to extend the employee tenure within your organization, let’s assume that you have 3 years with the employee. The next natural question that comes to mind is how these “three years sweet spot” will influence the way your company recruits. How will you lead the newly recruited executives most effectively during those 3 years and beyond? The whole idea is to help improve your company’s ROI on hiring investments and efforts expended to hire them.
Below are 4 tips that will help you get going:
1. Be Recruiting Continually:
Since you are now aware of the fact that the average tenure of a recruit is a little over 3 years, you should continuously bring in new talent to replace your outgoing executives. We are sure that not all your employees will be leaving within this three-year time-frame. Some may stay for five years and some may even stay for seven years and longer. However, the statistics show that many people may leave close to the three to four years mark. Thus, it is best that you in partnership with a professional recruitment firm keep filling the pipeline.
2. Use Interview Questions to Predict their Actions:
When interviewing candidates, you are already equipped with their employment history and it is usually discussed within the interview. Keep in mind that you are not just assessing their skills, you also need to try and determine if this is a person who is frequently jumping between companies every 2 years or so.
probing the candidate with questions to understand the reason for their frequent jumping will bring forth information that will help you avoid noncontributors and frequent jumpers. Hiring and training short term executives will never result in returns to your organization. It costs money to recruit, train and replace people. If they walk away too soon, your company also loses value in productivity. Also, at this point, it is important to advise caution from people who have spent a decade with an employer and have little to show for it. The right ROI equation consists of both longevity and productivity. If one is missing the equation goes for a toss.
It’s a good idea to include a question about career goals within the interview. Simply put, your interview question should answer your primary question: is the employee looking for productive employment for 3-4 years? Both commitment to productivity and a medium-term outlook should be evident. Ask your recruitment firm to assist you with shortlisting candidates with both productivity and a longer term perspective.
3. Speedier Training and Onboarding:
The earlier you get new executives trained, the sooner they can get productive. One of the crucial aspects of onboarding is induction training and tailor-made training modules to inculcate skill-sets and fine-tune the executives for your organization. The sooner you get this accomplished, the faster they will start delivering ROI. The key to quicker training lies in speeding up the training process without compromising quality. Take help from your recruitment firm in order to tailor make an induction program for your organization. Professional recruiters can assist you in creating an effective and efficient induction program which covers every aspect of induction within a short span of time. The whole idea is to help facilitate the learning curve in order to shorten the training and onboarding time of newly hired executives.
4. Keep in Touch With Your Alumni:
Much has been said in this article about new hires and newly recruited executives. Each organization has a set of trained executives who have given ROI to the organization in the past and moved on. If your organization has ensured that your alumni left on a good note, then you can keep communicating with them regularly. It is a good idea to keep an alumni database to aid constant communication. Your organization should show eagerness in helping them in their new adventures, as, every time your organization serves as a positive reference, it increases the chances that they will return the favor by way of referring friends and acquaintances. who knows, one day, they may as well come back to your organization with better skills at a more responsible position.
The fact is that today, it is virtually impossible to keep our best employees for every. However, with the right strategy, companies can extract value from employees even after they have left.
Finally, with the right recruitment partner, your recruitment process can get much easier and comfortable. A good search firm can help identify the most productive and committed executives for your organization.
