For Municipalities, Retention Starts With Recruitment

Over the last two years, Municipalities and Broader Public Sector organizations across the country have been challenged with navigating the “Great Resignation,” which in turn has created an incredibly complex retention issue for many organizations. Successful employee retention is driven by several touch points throughout an employee's tenure, but most organizations believe retention starts on the first day of the job. The true beginning of the retention formula and strategy starts with recruiting. Most organizations think recruitment and turnover are two very different things, but they are actually the beginning and end to the same journey. Some talent remains loyal and committed for decades, while others quit within a few months of starting. So why does this happen? The first interaction candidates have with a prospective employer is through the search and hiring process. If an organization decides to take shortcuts during the recruitment process, this results in an unstable foundational relationship with a candidate. So what is a retention-grounded approach to recruiting and where do you start?

The Synergy Between The Candidate and Employee Experience.?

The first step for building a strong recruiting to retain strategy is to focus on the experience. This refers to both the candidate and the employee experience. These two have a symbiotic relationship, a strong impact on the company’s future and even impact the effectiveness of attracting and retaining new hires. The candidate experience is all about the hiring process and treatment of a candidate and includes things like:

• How quickly applicants receive a response to their resume submissions, questions and follow-up
• How personable management and leadership is during the interview process
• The logistics and efficiency for how interviews are conducted

Each and every interaction, no matter how trivial, has a major impact. The candidate experience is the sum of the candidates’ thoughts, notions, and opinions about your organization, procedures, and the people they’ve talked to - and this judgment is formed even before they are hired. A recent Careerbuilder study found that only 32% of candidates say their experiences with the hiring process is positive. In fact, most job seekers and candidates are frustrated by the length of the process, demands made of them, and the steps they’re obligated to take.?

On the other hand, the employee experience is what an employee learns, sees, and hears from the company after they are hired. The experience takes place from their first company interaction through to their last goodbye. It's the memories they create, bonds they form, interactions they have, etc. With unemployment so low right now, the power is really in the hands of your employees. They can easily make use of this opportunity to pick and choose the employer, company and workplace they will be most satisfied with. There are a variety of factors that may tempt your employees to look elsewhere for a new opportunity, and the candidate experience your competitor is providing can be a differentiating factor in their decision-making process.

Approaching Hiring With A Fit-First Approach

A “Fit First” recruiting strategy refers to an organization filling in the gaps of their current workforce or team instead of hiring for sameness. It’s about harnessing the power of diverse teams to achieve better outcomes, less groupthink, more innovative solutions and all around better performance. A team of people who excel at seeing "the big picture," for example, may fail because they lack the individuals that can focus on details. If your Municipality or Broader Public Sector organization wants to achieve aggressive goals or become more innovative, it’s going to take new and novel perspectives to get there. Instead of basing a hiring decision on whether a candidate will fit in with the group, hire to specifically inject new energy and ideas into your organization and look beyond candidates who share the same perspectives, strengths and weaknesses.

Municipalities can do this by adapting their overall hiring and retention strategy to be more competitive and stand out. Offering remote work allows employers to increase their talent pool, potentially lowering labor costs and opening up positions to a greater number of workers across the country. In some cases for some Municipalities, remote work isn’t a viable option and need their employees to be on site for their work. Municipalities can pivot to offer flexible work options such as compressed workweeks or summer fridays. Even if remote work or compressed work weeks aren’t an option for your Municipality, here are a few other ways to remain competitive in your recruitment and retention efforts.?

Keeping Talent Engaged

Employee turnover has been a major issue for the Public Sector over the past two years. While hiring professionals rank compensation as the top priority for job seekers, more often than not the candidates I speak with say they’re even more interested in opportunities for career advancement. While some Municipalities are eager to bring everyone back into the office, this can be a dealbreaker for some employees. If your key hires remained with you throughout the pandemic, you have done a great job keeping your teams and employees happy and feeling valued. But even still, Municipalities and Public Sector organizations need to continue building and creating a workplace that your team and people want to be at which includes:

• Provide growth opportunities and clearly defined career paths
• Have the right tech and tools in place
• Empower and trust employees
• Be flexible on work arrangements
• Focus on convenience as an incentive
• Upskilling or leadership training?

Successfully building a retention-based recruitment strategy for tomorrow, requires an executive recruitment partner that can engage and grow with you. The future of recruitment for many Public Sector organizations will rely on much more than the job alone. Candidates want to see and know about benefits, culture, career development and DEI all up front even before they start a job. In order to retain those high performers, Public Sector organizations need to move past the mind-set of merely increasing salaries, and broaden their perspective to actionably consider how they can create the right working environment for future and existing employees and provide the best experience for each.?

About The Author

Kartik Kumar is a Partner at Legacy Executive Search Partners and has over 15 years experience in successfully executing 250 projects within the Public and Private Sector, including Municipal Government and Public Libraries. Kartik has a Bachelor’s in Business Management from Ryerson University and an accredited certification in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University.?

Prior to joining Legacy Executive Search Partners, Kartik has held several Managing Director roles within large national and international executive search firms. He has successfully developed a leading executive search practice across Ontario and Canada within Municipal Government and the Broader Public Sector. Contact Kartik to learn more ([email protected]) about Senior Leadership Recruitment within the Public Sector across Canada.