How your company values influence the talent you attract
Are you finding it hard to attract the right people to fill your job vacancies at the moment? If you are, have you considered how your company values (or perhaps your lack of them) might have a role to play? In our third blog on the topic of values, we’re looking at a key reason why so many leaders and business owners are now not just on board with having values, they’re also making sure they’re embedded in their organisation’s culture.
It's an employees’ market.
If you’re finding it hard to recruit the right people, you’re not alone. Deloitte’s most recent CEO survey found seven in ten expect a general shortage of candidates to be an issue for some time to come and 94% said they knew their specialised roles would remain hard to fill. The reasons behind this are dynamic and varied, particularly across the different sectors, but it’s safe to say it’s an employees’ market out there now, which is why, in that same survey, 96% of CEOs said they were focussed on improving the employee experience.
In today’s market, the old hiring process, which allowed employers to hire people based simply on what was on their CV and where any issues with the work environment could be swept under the proverbial rug, doesn’t work. Today’s prospective candidates have a wealth of information at their fingertips. They’ll check out your website and social media accounts and then they’ll check what others are saying about you on social media, in forums and especially ratings and review sites like Glassdoor where they can read what it’s really like to work for you. And just to prove how important that is now, here are a few more noteworthy stats from Glassdoor – pay attention to the last one in particular:
· Just over three quarters (77%) of people say they’d consider a company’s culture before applying.
· Over half say culture is more important to them than salary, but when it comes to Millennials, that figure rises to two thirds (66%).
· Nearly eight in ten (79%) say they’d consider a company’s mission and purpose before applying for a job.
Your values are therefore important not just to everyone in your organisation but to quite a few outside it too. It’s also worth remembering that when you publicise them externally, it’s not just prospective candidates who benefit, your business does as well.
Publicising your values will help you find the right kind of candidates.
You can teach skills, but it’s far less easy to teach behaviours. By placing your values at the forefront of your Employee Value Proposition you’ll attract candidates who naturally identify and align with your values. And once those people are in your team it’ll be far easier to train them up to more senior positions than recruit in at that level. This in turn will make these employees feel valued and, therefore, far more likely to want to stay.
Now, by publicising your values to the outside world we do mean more than just sticking them on your website. If you’ve read our other blogs you’ll know we’re all about making sure you and your current employees live and breathe your values. Last time we shared some examples of companies doing this well (so good we’re sharing them a second time), so make sure you also have examples out there, on your social media channels for example, of employees demonstrating your values in action. You should also weave your values through your job spec and ask values-based questions in the interview. Once you’ve done all of that, we truly believe you’ll have gained new employees who are not just a great cultural fit but who’ll be with you for a long time.
