Talent attraction and retention has always been a key challenge for businesses, but in recent years, the competition for people has intensified. In this article, UMi Chief Executive Nicki Clark OBE shares what she has learned about finding and keeping a company’s greatest asset – its people.
In the last few months, the recurring theme when I’ve been talking to other business owners and leaders is that for the first time, finding the right people and not finance has been the number one challenge. For many years, we have talked about the skills gap in certain sectors but today, the challenge of not just finding the right skills and attitudes but keeping hold of them is top of the list for pretty much all businesses regardless of size, sector or location. A recent survey of a network I am part of found that circa 100 businesses had around 900 vacancies and are forecasting to have 1700 in the next 12 months.
As a wholly employee-owned business, ranked in the top 100 best businesses to work for, and on the journey to becoming BCorp certified, we like to think we are a great team to join at UMi and a pretty compelling point of difference from an employment perspective. In today’s world though, even those credentials are not enough to tackle the lack of people looking for work and the escalating competition between businesses to retain the talent they need just to stay in business. The pressure of the cost-of-living crisis is also driving individuals to focus on securing the highest possible salaries even if it’s not the kind of business they want to work for long term.
So, how can we tackle what feels beyond our direct control? Here are some things that I’ve picked up on my travels, some of which we are exploring ourselves at UMi or that I think are definitely worth considering.
- Retention bonuses – rather than inflate your overall people costs on a permanent basis, some owner/managers are creatively applying retention bonuses. These can be applied over a 12-month period or, where there are cost of living pressures, applied quarterly or even every two months.
- Long term incentives – more and more businesses are looking at some form of employee ownership i.e., placing a proportion of shares in Trust structures rather than distributing them to employees. Another option could be more traditional LTIP (Long Term Incentive Programmes), which are contractual and triggered based on strict performance criteria
- Enhanced flexibility – in today’s world, employers are having to be much more open minded to greater flexibility in where and how people work than they otherwise might feel comfortable with, so the message is – stretch your thinking beyond your comfort zone.
- Salary sacrifice schemes – there are a number of HMRC-approved salary sacrifice schemes that can really enhance the benefits you provide to your team and can have a direct impact on reducing the cost of living for them without increasing cost to the business.
