Hiring & Retaining Employees in a Diverse, Competitive Job Market

Today’s strong economy and record-low unemployment levels have produced a highly competitive job market, making it challenging for companies to recruit, grow and retain top talent. Employers must appeal to a diverse workforce that includes a wide range of backgrounds, ages and experiences to cultivate a creative, innovative and productive team.

With the right strategy, successfully recruiting, growing and retaining valuable employees is possible, even in a tight labor market.

Recruiting and Hiring

The first step – before recruiting can begin – is to clearly define and communicate your organization’s culture. Your company culture should be intentional, not accidental. This will help you identify and attract the right candidates. This is no easy task, given a recent survey by Paychex that showed 42% of human relations professionals listed finding candidates who fit their company’s culture as one of their biggest hiring challenges.

Golden 1 Credit Union has centered our culture on our core values of service excellence, respect, integrity and reliability. We recently instituted an employer branding strategy targeted at potential candidates that showcases these values as well as life at the credit union. When someone considers applying for a position at Golden 1, we want them to see the opportunity as a career rather than a job, and that our culture is clearly communicated to potential candidates. Our first and best tool is our employee referral program, which has brought us some of our best hires. Additionally, we leverage social media to promote and evangelize our culture. We also look to our existing employees to demonstrate these values in branches and in the community. We have updated our careers web page, social media channels and other materials to reflect these ideals.

After recruiting candidates, our next step is ensuring that screening and hiring helps attract the right talent. Job interviews are the most important tool human resources professionals use to determine whether a candidate fits the company culture. It’s important to ask questions designed to discover what motivates the applicant, rather than only looking at their technical skills and work experience. Investing time up front with the candidate pays off in the long run and helps an organization filter out those who may not match the culture, even if they have the appropriate experience.

Golden 1 recently adopted a screening process to determine if a candidate’s personality aligns with our culture. We ask two-way, open-ended questions related to the qualities our organization most values. As part of our interview process, we look for candidates to demonstrate their capabilities and values, while at the same time ensuring that our interviewers clearly define Golden 1’s overall mission, core values and emphasis on our culture. Some key questions include:

• What type of culture do you thrive in?
• What values are you drawn to and what’s your ideal workplace?
• Why do you want to work here?
• How would you describe our culture based on what you have seen? Is this something that resonates with you?

Training and Retaining

Every company’s success is bolstered by the dedication and commitment of valued employees. Once a great team is in place, it’s important to keep them happy, encouraged and motivated. In a Speakap study, 74% of employees said culture is important to them and 58% said they would take a job elsewhere if the new company had a better culture.

Golden 1 realizes the competition is fierce, and we have a strong onboarding program to integrate new hires. It’s a continuous process that helps employees perform their roles and engage with our members and their colleagues. Our culture is woven into ongoing learning and development for employees and leaders, and through mentor/buddy partnerships. We want to ensure our employees are on the proper career path.

We continuously invest in our team at all levels. In particular, our leadership program adheres to Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Throughout the year we host multiple trainings and offer a leadership essentials course, where we take a deeper dive into our vision, mission and what it means to be a leader at Golden 1. A popular tool is our intranet site, which every employee can access. Employees are invited to share special acknowledgements, work in the community and other highlights in the “Celebration Connection” and “Golden 1 Moments” areas on the site, helping deepen the personal connection employees have to each other and to Golden 1.

Ensuring employees have opportunities for professional growth, development and internal mobility is extremely important. In addition, we offer highly competitive compensation and benefits, robust wellness programs and employee perks to allow employees to live their best lives in and out of the workplace. And we continue to check in with our employees to make sure these efforts are effective. We conduct engagement surveys each year to gauge how our employees are feeling and receive feedback on opportunities for improvement.

Five Tips for a Cultural Fit

1.  Define your culture: You must clearly define your company’s culture and core values. It’s the glue that holds an organization together.

2.  Create diversity: It’s a mistake to hire people who are all alike. A diverse workforce enriches and strengthens a company’s culture, and brings new and innovative ideas to the table.

3.  Promote and market your culture: Highlight your culture on social media and your company’s website. It encourages employees to share feedback, fosters ways to get your messages out and gives a glimpse of a day in the life at your organization.

4.  Hire for culture, not skill: Skills can be taught, but the right attitude is priceless. Ensure you are asking the right questions during the interview process to draw out candidates’ motivations to determine if they might be the right fit.

5.  Consistently reinforce your culture: Onboarding and continued training are critical to ensure employees are set up for success. Consider lunches with managers or peers to reinforce core values as part of the onboarding experience, and at regular intervals afterward. At Golden 1, we have implemented onboarding guidelines and programs for all levels in the organization. It’s important to remember that making the right impression is important, even with candidates who don’t ultimately prove to be the right fit. We want them to feel good about their experience with Golden 1, because they could be a member or future member.

Heather Andrade-Neumann is SVP, Chief Human Resources Officer at Golden 1 CU. She can be reached at 916-732-2900 or handradeneumann@golden1.com.