You don’t need a hiring and retention strategy.
You need to become the kind of business that hires and retains great people through a great employee experience.
As I interact with leaders who are looking to grow their businesses, hiring and retention are becoming far more often cited barriers to growth. I spoke to a CEO of a 100-person company just last week who has 20 unfilled positions and is turning away work that is needed to achieve this year’s revenue target.
Many business leaders come to me looking for a simple strategy or a quick set of tactics that will solve these challenges. And there are some things you can do that will have a quick impact, like listening to employees, recognizing their accomplishments, and taking an interest in their lives.
But you can only solve those things permanently through an engaged workforce. A workforce that people want to be a part of, that recruits other great people and keeps them longer.
And an engaged workforce can’t come until you recognize that you are in the experience business – for your clients AND your employees.
One example of this is Chick-Fil-A. We all recognize them as the fast casual restaurant with the best customer experience. But you may not know that they apply the same experience strategy to their employees.
Chick-Fil-A wants their customers to:
- Want to spend time in their restaurants more often
- Be happy to pay full price
- Tell others about the experience of eating there
Chick-Fil-A wants their employees to:
- Enjoy spending time at work
- Look at their paycheck as the least important part of the job
- Tell others about the experience of working there
To improve your employee experience, start where Chick-Fil-A does: by designing employee time – by making work a place they want to be. Start with the experience you want for your employees and work backwards to ensure they view work as time well spent.
What that looks like will be different for every business, but it’s some of the most important design work you’ll do. It will make you the kind of business that doesn’t turn away work because you can’t hire and retain great employees.