We chaired a Think Tank at the Automotive Logistics UK Summit, on ‘recruiting and retaining the right talent’. Answering question from some of the sectors most influential and leading organisations, here are the highlights of what we discussed!

So firstly, how do you identify who the right talent is? You go through a rigorous recruitment process and still struggle to find the ideal candidate.

Easy (ish) -you need to build a profile of an ideal candidate from your existing model employees that you feel represent who you are and what you do well. Peer review is always a useful tool – although the interviewing process is usually completed at a more senior level, it would be beneficial to incorporate some of your model employees to participate at this stage. They’d act as a benchmark for exactly what you want, as well as being a useful tool in helping you to identify the skills, characteristics and behaviours you need to really do the job.

Suffering from an aging work force? What can you do to attract a younger audience?

Ask yourself where does the audience you want to attract reside? Utilising social media as an effective tool to engage with a younger audience is imperative. The retail industry for example targets a young audience specifically. H&M’s “place of possible” campaign video, mostly importantly, only released on YouTube. Using a platform’s targeted advertising to appear before videos watched by their target demographic. Target marketing at its best as far as we’re concerned!

How do we retain our talent though? It’s a common occurrence that people get the training and tick in the box on their CV they need and then leave – obviously this isn’t ideal.

Let’s face it; a competitive salary is always going to be a large contributing factor as to how employers obtain and retain employees, but the number of zeros on that payslip isn’t everything nowadays. Something that every employer wants to avoid in this situation is a wage war, which is completely understandable. Your work force is the forefront of your organisation, they are your brand ambassadors. You need them to be talking about how great their experience is with your company and to tell their compelling stories.

Ask your employees what they value in a job, in addition to the predictable salary comment, you’ll also generate discussion around what they would really appreciate. Offer people choice, do they need job security above anything else? Flexible working hours? Progression in the work place? Is their work environment making them happy? How you do business, your values and how you treat employees really matters, so delivering what your employees want from you in the most pragmatic way is important. Position yourself to show you care, this will mitigate the risk of people leaving the company or the boss. 

Incentivising the role – we asked TruckNet, the largest forum for truck drivers, what was their most used app. Netflix came out on top. Therefore, offering to pay for their Netflix account is a useful incentive, it is a tool that can be pulled on when they are on their breaks as an additional comfort – simple, but it shows you care.

If you’d like to discuss securing and retaining talent with us further, or you want to share your thoughts about a topic we haven’t covered here, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear form you!

@Skill_Logistics
Contact@skillsforlogistics.co.uk
11th March 2019