By: LaKisha C. Brooks, M.S., M.Ed, CDR, CDP
The talent experience begins with the recruitment process and ends with the employee’s exit. These points of engagement, and every moment in between, influence how your employees will regard your company. The talent you employ is just as important as the customers you seek to attract and keep. Both are influential regarding your reputation, brand strength, and profitability. If you can provide a quality talent experience for the people you hire, they will be productive, and you can retain them for longer. Here are some considerations for the standard of your onboarding, training, engagement, and reward processes to keep top talent within your business.
Onboarding Talent
At this point in the employment process, your business has attracted top talent, and they are ready to engage with your brand as an employee.
They are expecting everything your brand sold them on in the form of their employee experience. During the onboarding experience, make sure you connect those expectations to company culture. Emphasize the company mission and values and show new employees how this will influence their experience. Your employees need to feel welcome and excited about being a part of your team.
Training Talent
During the training phase of the talent experience, the goal is to get employees equipped with the knowledge to complete their work tasks and responsibilities skillfully. Therefore, the training needs to be supportive and engaging. Supportive training systems will include a thorough handbook for the employees to reference and an organized training process broken down into steps. They will also connect employees with essential points of contact or colleagues they can reach out to with questions or other needs. Employee questions and voicing concerns should be encouraged and be addressed as quickly as possible. These considerations go a long way towards making new talent feel as though they will be in a helpful, supportive environment that they can thrive in. This is the first opportunity for new talent to feel productive, and productive employees stay with companies longer.
Engaging Talent
Make sure that your new talent has a high-quality employee engagement experience with your company. Help your talent actively partner with the mission, values, and goals of your organization. When employees have a purpose within an organization, they feel like more of a part of the team, and they are more invested in the outcome of the business. Ensuring that employees feel seen and heard is also an essential part of their experience at this point of employment. Find ways to ask for feedback directly or indirectly, and keep Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives active.
Rewarding Talent
Once employees are successfully integrated into the culture and flow of your organization and they are productive, they want to be recognized. When rewarding employees, make sure to connect their reward or recognition to the company goal they met. This reinforces the importance of their contributions to the company and their sense of purpose in their position. Recognition and accolades from your organization also provide opportunities to enhance the talent experience through inclusion, as you can tailor rewards to something specific about the employee, such as personality, culture, or hobbies.