Decide on the Priority Recruitment and Retention Focus (Job Position) Quick Tool [2.1.2]
Introduction
These resources will assist in summarize your recruitment and retention data and use that information to identify the most critical job position.
The better you define the problems you are experiencing, the easier it will be to identify needed resources and generate a workable plan. By using the information gathered in Step 1, and documenting that information in the
Organizational Recruitment and Retention Research Workbook [2.1.2.d.1], you can select the focus of your recruitment and retention plan. Several resources are available to help define the problem and focus your plan. These are outlined in Task 5 of this section.
The order of the following tasks can be modified to meet the needs of your organization. However, they may be more effective when completed sequentially, so you are able to first identify problems and then select stakeholders who have the knowledge needed to resolve specific recruitment and retention issues. For example, if you have a high turnover rate in one position but find that employees supervised by a specific manager are retained longer, you may want to enlist the support of that manager. If you have difficulty recruiting staff of a particular ethnic background to meet client population needs, you may want to invite a community stakeholder who has knowledge or experience with that population.
Task 1: Review Information from Your Organizational Research
Prepare the
Summary Report Template on Findings in Recruitment and Retention Research [2.1.3.a.2] to summarize all of the information gathered from interviews with key stakeholders, employee exit interviews, employee satisfaction surveys, and information gleaned from HR and organizational materials. This summary should help you clarify the retention, turnover, and vacancy problems, and is set up to be usable as a central document in meetings.
Task 2: Select a Recruitment and Retention Advisory Group
An advisory group can provide feedback, direction, and support for the recruitment and retention effort. The advisory group should include stakeholders who have knowledge or experience dealing with recruitment and retention problems, along with key influencers and decision makers. The resource tool,
Using an Advisory Group [2.1.3.b.2], can assist in advisory group and stakeholder management by providing links to information about stakeholder analysis, forming advisory groups, attributes of a successful advisory group member, setting up effective agendas, and other information.
Task 3: Convene the Advisory Group
Convene the advisory group, using recommended techniques to support your focus on the research results. The resource,
How to Hold Effective Meetings [2.1.3.c.1], provides a summary of general meeting tasks and links to effective and ineffective meeting procedures, including teleconference meetings.
Task 4: Review the Recruitment and Retention Issues
Use the
Recruitment and Retention Discussion Questions/Reflections [2.1.3.a.1] resource to help focus on factual recruitment and retention data and advance discussions and resolutions. Although you may have a good sense where organizational recruitment or retention problems are, you also want to do the following:
- Identify the precise nature of staffing problems (When and why are staff leaving? What are the vacancy patterns? Are you able to recruit the right people? Is there a problem with keeping the right people onboard?);
- Identify and categorize strategies that are working;
- Identify and categorize strategies that are not working; and
- Collect baseline data to use in comparison to the results of an intervention or corrective action.
Task 5: Define the Problem and Make a Decision about the Priority Recruitment or Retention Problem
Several resources are available to help define the problem and make a decision about the focus of your recruitment or retention plan. Although any of the following assignments or related worksheets can be used independently, they are most effective when used as supportive pieces to the entire step.
Assignments include:
Use the resources above to identify the problem through a series of questions and assignments to help reflect on the possible issues surrounding recruitment or retention challenges to identify the challenge (usually a job position) that will be the focus.
The resource,
Tools to Help with Making Decisions [2.1.3.b.1], provides links to worksheets and step-by-step instructions to support you in the decision making process. These include links to Pareto Analysis, grid analysis, frequency charts, and influence maps. The goal is to identify one position that is critical to resolve.