Does your company have a poor employee retention rate? Not only can this increase your human resources expenses in terms of hiring an on-boarding processes, it can also damage your company’s reputation. In turn, it may become more difficult for your HR personnel to fill open positions as they spend more time trying to defend your company than sell its offerings to potential candidates.
There is, of course, a way to solve this problem. Here’s how:
1. Understand how job abandonment hinders recruitment
People abandon jobs for a number of reasons. A BambooHR survey study of 1,005 U.S. employees aged 24 and older found that the top three reasons people left their jobs was because they didn’t like their boss, they wanted to do different work or because they were performing responsibilities that differed than what they were hired to do.
While we can’t say these former employees are more likely to leave reviews on career review sites like Glassdoor, it’s safe to assume that if they did, they likely wouldn’t be overly positive. And when job seekers stumble upon negative company reviews, you risk losing out on potential qualified candidates.
“30 percent of people want to see a company have at least a 3 star rating before they’d apply to a company.”
A Software Advice survey of 4,644 people in the U.S. found that just over 30 percent of people want to see a company have at least a 3 star rating before they’d apply to a company. Candidates were most likely to be deterred from jobs by a lack of career opportunities, poor culture and values, a negative work/life balance, bad senior management reviews and low compensation and benefits.
It only makes sense that job abandonment and subsequent poor reviews are likely to make it difficult for recruiters to sell their companies to prospective candidates. That’s why it’s critical companies take the time to reduce job abandonment.
2. Reduce job abandonment
First and foremost, hiring managers need to understand where talent is looking for jobs and where they typically leave company reviews. A 2015 LinkedIn survey of 20,000 professionals in 29 countries found that 60 percent of job applicants looked for new opportunities on online job boards, 56 percent searched on social professional networks and 50 percent by word of mouth.
The first step is knowing where the talent is so you can reach out to them. This could possibly reduce the overall time it takes to hire a candidate. The second step is to evaluate job review sites, like Glassdoor. Look at what former employees are saying, respond appropriately – to show you’re making an effort to improve company culture – and make changes internally according to the reviews.
Reducing job abandonment takes time, but once this number drops, you may find it’s easier to hire highly qualified industry leaders.
