The Great Resignation shows no sign of slowing and may be the biggest crisis HR professionals face in their careers. New research shows that two in five workers could leave their jobs within six to 12 months. The pandemic may have triggered the start of these resignations, but that shouldn’t blind employers to underlying systemic problems.
Some sources attribute this churn to a shift in employee expectations, linked with the introduction of hybrid working policies or burnout. But it also points to a failure on the part of businesses to engage their valuable employees.
Engagement and recruitment are two sides of the same coin, yet organisations often treat them as independent processes, and this disconnect is fuelling the attrition problem. Instead of retaining and growing talent while diversifying the talent pool, businesses are shooting themselves in the foot by rushing to fill vacancies.
This pressure to go faster is damaging recruitment. Thomas’ global survey of nearly a thousand HR professionals found that six in 10 new hires fail. With budgets under scrutiny due to the downturn, getting your hiring right will be crucial to drive your business forward.
The same study found that soft skills are the key to improving productivity and addressing this could save businesses over $1 trillion a year. These soft skills can also enable organisations to build an agile, adaptive workforce.
Rising living costs will only make it harder for HR to secure, engage and retain top talent. This calls for talent culture transformation. HR must move from intuition to scientific talent acquisition and engagement strategies, and continually review their effectiveness.
Most businesses believe that they have less than two years to transform their talent culture before suffering competitive or fiscal consequences. Find out how you can transform in the free research report ‘The Talent Culture Timebomb’.