Right now, every organisation is competing for talent in what has been labelled as the toughest employment market in decades. In this kind of market, it is proving to take longer to find the right people for businesses, so employers don’t want to be in a position where they have to replace their people. With the market super busy and replacements taking 3-6 months to occur, we all know we are far too busy to be waiting that long for good staff!
A key thing to remember at this time of year is to conduct those mid-year performance reviews with all staff. To lessen the risk of our people wanting to leave, we need to use these reviews to check in with them – asking open questions around where they are at and encouraging open-ness and honesty. This doesn’t mean we need to throw money at our employees! But, if you do have someone coming to you wanting a salary increase, get them to justify how they feel they are adding value.
When it comes to thinking about how we are adding value to our people, it doesn’t always come in a monetary form – and now is an important time for both employees and employers to remember that. With 2020 being the year that it was, salaries have been up and down. Many employees have been offering higher salaries over the last few months to keep their quality people around. We can add value to our employees in other ways – by communicating in the right way, building a great team culture and showing appreciation to our staff. We can add value to our employees by creating a workplace that our people WANT to come to everyday.
I know we are all busy, but now is not the time to be losing staff. We have multiple jobs on across each industry right now, and this is coming from businesses who are expanding, rather than businesses who are losing people. We all know how much work is happening across our state, so what would happen if our key staff left at a crucial time like now? We need to be strategic around not losing people and thinking about things we can be doing to make sure these people are happy.
There are so many other non-monetary elements that are equally as important to discuss when it comes to review time. Our staff are our biggest asset, so making the most of mid-year performance reviews, checking in often and providing feedback is an extremely important part of any great business culture and ensuring our people stick with us.