This week, Jeremy Eskenazi ties up his two-part series, Secure Top Talent Without Offering More Salary, with additional ways to maintain happy employees – while watching your bottom line. Read part one here.
In addition to the three ways discussed last week, here are tips 4 – 8 that you can use to creatively enhance your workforce without increasing salaries.
4. Having good managers – A positive workplace culture is a competitive advantage. If you invest in managers who care about their teams and prioritize teaching and coaching employees, you will be able to attract, develop—and importantly—retain your top talent. It’s been proven many times that people work for people, not companies, so make sure your managers are good listeners, care about their people and can show empathy.
5. Offering hiring bonus/signing bonus – Because these are one-time costs, they don’t compound like salary does. A bonus can help you counter another offer and be equally attractive up front as many bonuses can be paid within the first three months and can have a condition of repayment if the employee leaves before a set amount of time. For hourly workers, a few hundred dollars up front can make a big difference in whether they decide if they want to join your organization.
6. Starting benefits coverage earlier – The traditional model for health care benefits in Canada and the United States has been to delay offering benefits for 90 days to get through a probation period. If you can offer these from day 1, especially in the United States where bridging health care costs can be very high, this is a great employee incentive. A company could also offer to reimburse existing health costs or pay for the previous employer’s benefits until the transition occurs.
7. Reimbursing education costs – Another great non-compounding benefit is education subsidies. Skills change quickly and the investment in learning benefits both the employee and the company in the long term.
8. Having modern work tools – This one may seem obvious as computers are a standard today, but in device bring-your-own-device era, offering a broad range to choose from or solid reimbursement plans for employees to have the latest and greatest is a draw. Think about workstations, cool collaboration spaces, high-quality headsets, dual monitors, choice of office chairs and health snacks. These are all things that attract candidates looking to have a positive work experience.
Remember, money does reign as king. If you offer 30% less salary than your competitor, even this list will not help you win the talent war. However, if you offer 30% more salary, your balance sheet might start to look a little funny and it will be difficult to sustain making above-market salary offers for many roles. The market is competitive and being creative with the advantages you can afford will help show candidates you care about their experience and that you understand what matters to them from a total offering perspective.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeremy Eskenazi is an internationally recognized speaker, author of RecruitConsult! Leadership, and founder of Riviera Advisors, a boutique Recruitment/Talent Acquisition Management and Optimization Consulting Firm. Jeremy is not a headhunter, but a specialized training and consulting professional, helping global HR leaders transform how they attract top talent at some of the world’s most recognized companies. For more information on Jeremy Eskenazi, please visit: www.RivieraAdvisors.com.
