Attracting and retaining elite talent is one of the biggest challenges organizations face today. In a competitive job market, like ours in technology, finding skilled professionals who fit your organization’s culture and desire to stay at your company—requires more than just compensation. To build an elite team you need to create an environment where team members feel valued, supported, and inspired.

Here are a few ideas to consider making your workplace attractive for talented professionals and to keep them engaged for the long haul.

Make Your Organization Compelling to Top Talent

Potential future teammates will evaluate your organization based on its reputation, work environment, and how it treats team members. Your organization plays a crucial role in attracting high-quality candidates.

Here’s what makes organizations stand out:

• Strong organization brand: In this electronic world candidates research organizations before applying. Having positive reviews, active engagement on social media, and a reputation for treating team members with excellence naturally attracts more interest.
• Competitive and fair compensation: Compensation matters, but factors like flexibility, family, benefits, and work-life balance are equally important.
• Transparency and genuineness: Be upfront about your work culture and avoid overpromising. Genuineness builds trust and prevents disengagement. It is much more costly to hire someone who doesn’t stay or work out than to be more patient in the hiring process to find the right candidates who align with your culture and values.

A vast majority of job seekers look at an organization’s online reviews and consider their brand before applying. Maintaining a positive online presence is essential for attracting top talent.

Make Candidates Feel Valued

The hiring process isn’t just about evaluating candidates for their talent and culture fit but the opportunity for candidates to do the same of your organization. In our case they could meet with six to eight team members from different departments. These different areas are not for assessing their skills but more importantly assessing their culture fit. It also gives candidates the opportunity to ask questions about experiences from other team members in your organization. You never know who will relate and connect with candidates. This can leave candidates feeling valued and excited to join.

Here are a few ideas on how to create a positive candidate’s experience:

• Make a strong first impression: The hiring experience should mirror your organization’s culture. It should be well organized, fun, informative, and efficient. We talked about our organization’s values of Faith, Family and Business in that order.
• Communicate clearly: Keep candidates informed throughout the process. Timely updates and honest feedback build respect, even if they’re not selected. Treat those who are not selected with courtesy and grace. Remember candidates not selected can still have an impact on how your organization is viewed.
• Show genuine interest: Go beyond qualifications. Ask about what’s important to them, hobbies, career aspirations and personal goals to show you care about their future.

Leverage Team member Referrals

One of the most effective ways to attract top talent is through team member referrals. Team members who enjoy working for your organization naturally recommend it to others. We encourage referrals by offering incentives like bonuses and recognition. Currently a third of our elite talent came from internal referrals. Leverage your team’s networks by encouraging them to share job openings on social media. Candidates who come recommended are more likely to fit your organization’s culture and stay longer.

Build relationships with agencies who promote your values and culture.

Your recruiting agencies can often be the first impression potential hires have of your organization. Your HR team members should be the biggest cheerleaders in your organization promoting your culture and values to the agencies. A byproduct of this relationship is HR team building loyalty and trust with your recruiting agencies. The outcome is agencies becoming organizational fans promoting characteristics and values about your culture that stand out to potential recruits.

Here are some things HR can do to strengthen this relationship with agencies:

• Talk about what candidates will gain: Highlight what the candidate will gain from the role and how they can make an impact on the team.
• Be clear and specific about requirements: Vague descriptions can lead to mismatched applications and wasting everyone’s time. Have a clear outline of skills, qualifications, expectations and responsibilities.
• Showcase your culture: In our case, agencies use feedback they receive from other candidates they have placed with our organization to promote our culture of learning, faith, family, fun, longevity and rewards.
• Treat your agencies as partners: Yes, they are recruiting for you, but if you treat them as partners and truly work with them to provide them with honest feedback on why one candidate made it to the next round of interviews but another one didn’t, then it will only help both of you as you continue to work together to find the best candidates for your organization.

Offer Attractive Compensation and Benefits

While compensation is important, it’s not the sole factor that attracts top talent. Offering a comprehensive benefits package shows that you care about team members’ well-being.

Consider including:

• Flexible work arrangements: Offering some combination of hybrid and remote work options allows team members to balance their personal and professional lives. Providing this flexibility not only improves morale but also makes your organization more attractive to top talent.
• Health and wellness programs: Implementing comprehensive health initiatives, including mental wellness support, physical fitness programs, organization contribution to Health Savings Accounts (HSA) or, like, in our case, additional HSA contributions for getting annual physicals. These all demonstrate your commitment to team members’ well-being. This creates a healthier, more productive, and engaged workforce.
• Career development opportunities: Providing access to training, mentorship, and leadership development programs helps team members advance their skills. Offering clear growth paths with bonuses and additional compensation incentives shows your commitment to their long-term success, increasing job satisfaction and retention. This also results in more efficient performance and higher customer satisfaction.
• Performance-based incentives: Rewarding hard work with bonuses, salary increases, or other financial incentives motivates team members to consistently perform at their best. Recognizing their efforts builds loyalty and encourages a culture of excellence. In our case team members can become eligible for an annual bonus based on company performance goals (WIGs – Wildly Important Goals).

Creating Innovative Culture

High-performing candidates seek workplaces where they can innovate and feel part of a team building something special together while staying humble and focusing on serving others. Build a culture that empowers team members and encourages creativity, teamwork, and innovation.

Have regular brainstorming meetings where team members can pitch solutions and ideas. Praise and recognize those who contribute innovative solutions. This creates a culture of collaboration, engagement and teamwork.

Empower Team Members with Professional Growth

An elite team will want to work where they can grow. Offering continuous learning opportunities not only attracts ambitious candidates but also helps retain your best team members.

Here are some ideas to support professional growth:

• Offer internship programs: Pairing new interns with experienced mentors helps them integrate faster.
• Provide access to training: Workshops and certifications keep skills current.
• Access to National Events: After earning time, the team allow attendance at national events where combination of fun, training, and certification are available.
• Encourage leadership development: Nurture future leaders through targeted training. In our case HR does an excellent job of regularly bringing future leaders together through Zoom and in person discussions.

Sources like LinkedIn say that a vast majority of team members would stay longer at an organization that invests in their career development. Investing in team members’ personal growth is a strategic way to reduce turnover but it comes with expectations that team members must also invest some of their personal time to continue to grow and learn. It is part of my negotiating philosophy of give to get.

Keep Team Members Engaged

Once you’ve attracted top talent, keeping them engaged is vital. Engagement directly impacts productivity and retention. Regularly check in with team members to understand their needs and address potential issues. Having a great HR department who stays in touch with team members and is approachable is vital.

Create engagement initiatives that make team members feel valued:

• Recognition programs: Publicly acknowledge achievements during team meetings. We also have a kudos program that allows for instant peer-to-peer recognition in Slack, where other team members can also engage with the post as well. This has been a great way for us to get new team members across many states engaged with the greater team.
• Personal development plans: Set individual learning goals and track progress.
• Social events: Build camaraderie through team get togethers and virtual meetups. In our case being across several states we have Quarterly/Annual virtual reviews of our annual WIG’s and a once a year all-team get together fun event.

Support Work-Life Balance

Burnout can be a major factor in turnover, especially in fast pace environments. Building a culture that respects work-life balance helps maintain team members satisfaction.

Here are ideas to promote balance:

• Flexible hours: If the role allows team members to have flexible scheduling options it’s ideal. This empowers team members to manage both work and personal commitments. This approach could reduce stress, boost morale, and help maintain a healthier work-life balance.
• Remote work options: Allowing team members in remote areas to work from home expands access and availability of resources to your organization.
• Mental health support: Offering resources like stress management workshops, relaxation programs, and wellness programs show you value team members well-being. Prioritizing mental health fosters a supportive environment and reduces burnout.
• Financial Health Support: Team members who are struggling with knowing how to balance their financial investments, savings, bills, and retirement cannot perform at their peak if they are worried about bills and debts. They may jump at the next job offer thinking it will solve their financial woes. Have an aggressive 401(k) matching program for team members to encourage savings for rainy days. We are blessed with financial experts who regularly do webinars and also do personal one-on-one advising for those who are interested. Prioritizing the balance of all aspects of team members’ lives shows that you value their well-being. Their success and your success go together.

Developing Strong Leadership

Leadership plays a significant role in retaining top talent. Managers who communicate openly and support their teams build lasting loyalty. Invest and encourage leadership training to develop skills in excellence, compassion, conflict resolution, and team motivation.

If you develop team members, they should be a great resource for promotion from within when openings become available.  When team members see this as a path to future leadership roles, they’re more likely to stay motivated and committed.

Adapt to Changing Expectations

Workplace expectations are evolving especially in technology, and successful organizations adapt. Let your team help you stay up with trends by empowering and listening to team members’ feedback.

Regularly challenge the team to change and to identify areas for improvement. Always make sure your goals, values and culture are aligned. Staying flexible shows that your organization evolves with changing times and should be noticed by those who are looking for new opportunities.

Creating a Lasting Impression

Attracting and retaining top talent is an ongoing process. By building a culture that values personal growth, faith, family, fun, innovation, respect, and professional growth, you create a workplace where people want to build their careers.