Startup and scaleup recruitment is a challenge that all founders have to navigate as their businesses grow. In this article we provide some practical advice for business owners to build awesome relationships and stop their staff heading for the exit.
Hiring the right people is hard enough. Keeping them as engaged employees is even harder. For a growing startup, filling key gaps with smart people is exciting and a sign that the business is growing. It’s both a relief and an achievement when you find the perfect candidates who can make a big impact, but keeping those people employed and engaged for the long term is what really grows your business. According to the Gallup State of the Global Workplace report , 85% of employees are not engaged or actively engaged in work. Yikes!
Experiencing Startup Recruitment Problems?
Here’s how it can play out. Your business is picking up pace and your recruitment is on the rise. The problem soon becomes that staff seem to be leaving almost as fast as you’re hiring them. Even worse, the key team member that was there from the beginning joins the exit train.
To avoid this happening in your business, we advise focussing on staff retention from day 1. Here are some actionable tips you can implement in your business to keep your people happy, motivated and producing great work.
Understanding Your People With Feedback Loops
A positive feedback loop can be a formal or informal process where an employer collects employee feedback around work satisfaction, then responds to that feedback to make them happier. You might think you’re doing everything right but if you don’t ask for feedback, you won’t know for sure. When staff don’t feel heard, they might look for the exits.
Feedback goes both ways. Traditionally employees receive feedback in some form of review process, but it’s equally as important for an employer to receive feedback from their employees. Smart businesses use feedback loops to gather insights and reviews from customers to improve their products and services. But when it comes to listening to employees’ complaints or grievances, and using that feedback to improve internal structure and workplace satisfaction, feedback loops aren’t as commonplace.
Don’t give your team gym memberships when they want free breakfast. Or mandate working in the office when they want the flexibility to work from home. There’s so much you can’t know if you don’t ask.
Implement Retrospectives
Retrospectives (retros) are reflection meetings that are run either at the end of a project, event, or a defined time-period such as at the end of the week, month, or quarter. Each retro meeting agenda should involve these three key elements:
- How did we go?
- What lessons can be applied for the future?
- What is the action going forward?
Why Retros Work
Retrospective meetings help to surface problems that would normally go unreported. They allow management to learn fast and act on issues before they become widespread problems. They also help to build a culture of transparency in the process, as team members feel encouraged to be open about both successes and failures.
Prevention Costs Less Than Rectification
Not only do retros help improve the pace of new iterations in products or process developments, but you also get a regular pulse on the frustrations, fears and challenges going on in the team before they become damaging to morale.
The key outcomes of retrospective meetings are:
- To get unbiased feedback on how the last event or period went
- Get active input from those ‘on the tools’ about what to aim for in the next project or period
- Get buy-in and alignment from the team on working towards organisational goals and what’s required to set them up for success.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel with Retros. Parabol has some free templates for how to run effective retros for all kinds of teams.
Run Employee Engagement Surveys
While retros and feedback loops are short, sharp and regular pulse checks, an employee engagement survey provides a better sense of engagement with the business and gives a deeper understanding of company culture. An engagement survey should be run at least once a year.
At BlueRock, every 6 weeks we ask all of our 300+ people how they’re feeling on a more personal level in the BlueRock Pulse. Then every 6 months we do a bigger engagement survey called the Road to Rock, which is more about getting feedback on how we’re going as a business.
Gullup studied over 2.7 million workers and came up with 12 questions of which the results can be compared with other teams and businesses across the world in their database.
A typical employee engagement survey process follows the following steps:
- Outline process / survey is coming to team
- Launch process via an anonymous tool such as Cognito
- Review data, highlight areas for further exploration
- Debrief team, explore further into detail to understand themes
- Agree actions & initiatives to take forward as results of survey.
Take Action on Employee Feedback
Feedback is only useful if you take notice and do something with it. Numbers don’t lie so start with the data. Are there any clear themes you can see in the responses? If the majority of the workforce hates their perks, then they aren’t perks but a waste of resources.
Although, it’s not only the majority that matters. Sometimes the big issues affect a small number of staff. Minority interests matter too, so look for big issues that affect a small number of people such as a sense of discrimination or bullying in the workplace.
Be Transparent About Results and Actions
Painful feedback can be embarrassing to share, but it also serves as a baseline for improvement. No matter how bad it might seem, publish those results and soon the team will be celebrating the improvements.
When staff feel valued they stay engaged and engaged staff invest their time in the business instead of leaving or doing the bare minimum or ‘quiet quitting’.
Reach Out For Help With Startup and Small Business Hiring and Staff Engagement
If you want to grow your business and keep hold of top talent, talk to BlueRock’s startup experts about building an effective feedback loop system and implementing employee engagement surveys and retrospective meetings into your workplace.
