11 Strategies to help government recruit,

retain, and reward top talent

Lessons learned from the State of Tennessee CLO

Table of Contents Practical Strategies for Government for Recruiting and Retaining Talent 3

Five Ways to Amplify Recruiting Capability 4

Six Ways to Transform Employee Retention 8

About Cornerstone OnDemand for Government 14

References 14

Practical Strategies for Government for Recruiting and Retaining Talent It’s a good time to be a government employer. While the Fourth Industrial Revolution has wrecked the staying power of private sector companies—the lifespan of the average company is now a meager 20 years—this disruption is providing government with an opportunity to compete for talent weary of the employer-centric gig economy and jobs devoid of meaning.

However, this advantage will only be fully realized by government entities willing to create workplaces that develop, empower, and engage employees of all generations. Employees today want meaningful work, self-driven career paths, and ongoing opportunities to learn. Amid the disruption in the private sector, government can become an employer of choice. How? By transforming how they recruit and retain talent.

Amid the disruption in the private sector, government can become an employer of choice

Five Ways to Amplify Recruiting CapabilityThe traditional way of attracting talent—uploading a job posting and waiting for candidates to apply—won’t enable government to effectively compete in the new talent landscape. Organizations must instead be increasingly proactive in order to attract and hire top-performing, motivated employees.

1. First impressions matter. Does your website, LinkedIn page, and Glassdoor profile reflect your organization’s culture? Do you build and engage your network through social media in a consistent and professional manner? Where does your organization rank in search engine results? Research shows candidates spend between one to two months independently researching an organization before applying: 53% rely on the organization’s website, 38% on LinkedIn, and 35% on search engines. Today’s candidates have access to salary ranges, reviews from current and former employees, and news; this increased transparency means candidates know more about your organization than ever before.

Takeaway: Top candidates will research your organization extensively. Make sure you’re highlighting the best about your culture and opportunities. Also, be prepared to explain and add context to unfavorable news or reviews by commenting on and interacting with candidates who leave any unfavorable responses.

2. Find the right candidates for the right job—faster—with a targeted approach. Your organization is seeking to fill myriad types of roles. Why use one generic web page for all job seekers? Leading recruiting teams target employees of choice by creating candidate-facing landing pages, designed to attract and engage different types of candidates for different types of jobs. This approach also helps organizations reduce future recruiting efforts: by capturing candidate information and career interests via targeted pages, organizations begin to build a more robust and long-lasting candidate pipeline.

Targeted landing pages are also a powerful way to introduce candidates to your organization’s culture, mission, and priorities. Telling your agency’s story—how you serve your community, future goals—can engage the right kind of candidate and quickly weed out those who aren’t a good match.

Takeaway: Create targeted landing pages for different roles to more easily attract and engage candidates who align with your organization’s culture and skill needs. Add candidate information to your recruiting pipeline to streamline future recruiting efforts.

3. Make it easy for candidates to apply. Today’s candidates don’t want to spend hours applying for jobs. In fact, studies show they won’t: 20% of job seekers will abandon an application that takes longer than 10 minutes to complete. Organizations increase the likelihood of keeping top talent interested by making the application process easy, short, and accessible on mobile; research shows that 43% of employees surveyed have applied for jobs on a mobile device.

Takeaway: Map the candidate’s journey by testing your entire application process periodically. Go through all the steps it takes to apply. Is the process difficult? Confusing? Time-consuming? If so, prioritize the development of a process more likely to attract and engage great talent, i.e., a high-touch, fast, and mobile friendly application experience.

4. Act quickly. The war for talent is here to stay. Organizations that wait too long to respond to preferred candidates run the risk of losing those candidates to other, more agile organizations. Organizations that still rely on outdated or manual application processes are at the greatest disadvantage: today’s top candidates won’t wait months—or even weeks—to hear back. Slow recruiting processes also have a negative effect on an organization’s reputation. Research by CareerBuilder for the 2018 State of Recruiting and Onboarding Report found that 48% of surveyed employees listed being left “in the dark” about where they stood as a candidate as their top job search frustration.

Takeaway: Make sure your applicant system and recruiting process enables your organization to find, assess, respond to and hire great candidates quickly.

Leveraging the power of human capital data enables a more strategic, cost-effective approach to recruiting

5. Use the power of data. Organizations that leverage human capital data have a strategic advantage. However, research by Deloitte found that 83% of organizations surveyed had “low people analytics maturity,” putting them at a disadvantage when it came to quickly attracting, identifying, and ultimately, hiring capable employees. In contrast, organizations with robust talent analytics—data about not just the quality of candidates but how long and how costly it was to hire that candidate—can hire better talent, faster, at less cost. Case in point, those organizations with mature analytics were two times “more likely to improve recruiting efforts” and three times “more likely to realize cost reductions and efficiency gains.”

For government organizations, leveraging the power of human capital data enables a more strategic, cost-effective approach to recruiting—well worth the investment in the technology needed to do so. Data can be used not only to attract candidates with the right skills—candidates who also have an affinity for public service—but align future needs with potential roles, assess and build capacity, predict retirement eligibility, and capture candidate career interests and career goals.

Takeaway: Do more than track and report days to hire and turnover statistics. Use technology to both capture more data and access immediate insight about recruiting strategies and results.

Six Ways to Transform Employee Retention

Retaining top talent in an employee-controlled market requires a new, creative approach. For government organizations, the need to transform outdated retention strategies is even more critical. The delivery of crucial public services depends on the ability of local, state, and federal agencies to engage and retain committed, motivated employees.

1. Incorporate retention activities throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Despite the fact that 30% of new hires quit within the first 90 days of starting, most organizations still invest in retention strategies that focus solely on established employees. To stem the tide of attrition, organizations must make retention strategies part of the entire employee lifecycle, including the first 30, 60 and 90 days.

As 51% of surveyed employees reported looking for another job even after they’ve accepted an offer, organizations need to also begin retention efforts before day one on the job. Staying in contact with new hires, beyond automated onboarding messaging, drives meaningful connection. Asking for new hire feedback about the hiring process, as well as their current and future career goals, helps build excitement for and engagement with the employee’s first day.

Takeaway: Retention starts with the offer letter. Create a consistent, positive, employee-centric experience for new hires before day one on the job.

2. Extend onboarding into year one. Successful organizations don’t onboard new hires for a week or even a month. They onboard for an entire first year, using learning, surveys, face-to-face meetings, collaboration opportunities, and regular check-ins to engage and socialize new employees.

According to consultant Ron Carucci, as quoted in Harvard Business Review, effective organizations onboard new hires by focusing on three areas: the organizational (how things work on the job and within the organization), the technical (what is expected from the employee and how the employee can improve and grow), and the social (building relationships). The State of Tennessee statewide onboarding process goes beyond the traditional 30 days. Led by Assistant Commissioner and State Chief Learning Officer, Dr. Trish Holliday, the state’s onboarding learning and development strategy is a five-dimensional proactive program that focuses on:

• Coordination – integrating the new hire into the new role

• Compliance – helping the new hire learn and adhere to compliance regulations

• Clarification – working to understand the new hire’s expectations

• Culture – helping the new hire understand the organization

• Connection – establishing interpersonal relationships

Takeaway: To improve new hire retention, carry onboarding throughout the entire first year. Address new hires’ development and growth across multiple dimensions: the role, the company, and the culture.

40% of employees who are unhappy with a manager’s performance interview for new jobs within three months

3. Provide feedback. Employees today want feedback in real time, insight from managers that can help them do their jobs better today. And yet few organizations provide regular (let alone real-time) feedback. This despite the fact that research by Gallup shows that organizations that provide employee feedback (specific to employee strengths) experience 14.9% lower turnover and 12.5% greater productivity.

Takeaway: Enable real-time performance coaching and feedback for employees at every level to drive retention and productivity.

4. Ask for feedback. Successful organizations not only provide feedback to employees; they also ask for feedback from employees on a regular basis. As stated in the 2018 Retention Report: Truth and Trends in Turnover, an effective retention strategy must include “ask[ing] for feedback in a way that brings out the truth.” Additionally, the report suggests that employers should “[never] limit the extent to which employees can express their ideas, preferences, expectations, and intents.” Employee feedback can also help HR address previously unidentified management challenges and thus address potential employee flight risks; research shows that 40% of employees who are unhappy with a manager’s performance interview for new jobs within three months.

Dr. Trish Holliday (State of Tennessee) recommends conducting “stay” interviews, where top-performing, engaged employees are asked why they’ve chosen to stay with the organization. Stay interviews provide tremendous insight into what is effective within an agency, from the perspective of valuable talent. Suggested questions include:

• “What kind of exposures and experiences have you enjoyed the most/the least?

• What kind of experiences would you like to have in the future?

• What has contributed to your success in your role?

• How could your manager better challenge and leverage your knowledge and skills?

• What makes for a great day at work?

Takeaway: Give employees a voice. Soliciting feedback from employees drives engagement—and engagement drives retention. From an HR perspective, employee feedback can also provide unique insight into leadership challenges and areas in need of improvement.

5. Enable continuous learning and career paths. Employees today want more than just-in-time training. Workers of all generations now expect employers to facilitate continuous learning, as well as support varied career paths. Government organizations can leverage technology to deliver and manage a wide variety of learning opportunities for employees at all levels, including leadership development. Learning can be designed and contextualized to support individual goals, career aspirations, and team growth and development.

While learning opportunities play a significant role in retention, they also help organizations create bench strength and a ready talent pipeline. By continually developing employees, organizations can more readily and confidently promote from within.

To create a learning culture it takes asking the following tough questions:

• Are we engaging senior leaders in creating a continuous learning culture?

• Are we growing and distributing leadership across all organizational levels?

• Are we continuously evaluating readiness factors when developing talent?

• Are we developing formal and informal systems to foster collaboration and information-sharing across boundaries?

• Are we developing innovative learning and performance solutions to keep up with changing needs?

Takeaway: Become a learning culture! Learning cultures prioritize development, provide employees with ongoing opportunities for growth, and encourage self-driven leadership and career paths. Use learning technology to ensure learning is targeted, contextualized, and meaningful for employees at every level.

6. Recognize and reward people for their contributions. While financial compensation plays a role in retention, it’s not the only meaningful way to motivate and engage today’s talent. Here are other key ways to recognize and reward employees:

• Acknowledge employees and teams who are performing well. Positive feedback and recognition lift morale and remind people they’re solving meaningful challenges. Research at Harvard University found that higher performing teams had the highest ratio of positive to negative feedback, 5.6 positive comments for every negative comment. In contrast, a Gallup analysis found that workers who haven’t been recognized for their work are “twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year.”

• Share positive external feedback. Government employees do important work, work that helps solve significant community-based and nationwide challenges. This work isn’t always easy; when there’s positive feedback from external sources, share it to help employees regain a sense of purpose and remember why they chose to work in government service.

• Leverage employee performance and engagement data to drive compensation. Begin tracking performance and engagement and use this data to make compensation decisions. This not only makes compensation more meaningful but empowers employees to change their performance and compensation outcomes.

• Provide anywhere, anytime access to learning curriculum. Learning opportunities are a crucial component of retention but they can also function as a meaningful reward. Let motivated employees take additional courses on their own time to develop outside interests, explore potential career paths, and satisfy their curiosity.

Takeaway: Today’s employees are motivated by more than financial compensation, so include innovative recognition and reward options as part of your retention strategy.

© 2019 Cornerstone

Cornerstone is a recognized global human capital management leader with a core belief that companies thrive when they help their employees to realize their potential. Learn more at csod.com.

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13. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. “The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio.” Harvard Business Review. March 15, 2013. Available at https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism

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About Cornerstone for government Government organizations that offer employees the chance to do meaningful work in tandem with the opportunity to participatein a talent development culture can become employers of choice.

To learn more about how to build a talent development culture, visit:csod.com/state-local

csod.com/federal-government