Why are employees constantly looking for new jobs? Is it all about the money? It’s time you found out.

• One on one – A good idea would be to have a one on one with your good employees whom you fear might want to move on to other jobs. Ask them the reasons for their dissent and speak to them about their larger goals in life and how you and your organization can help them achieve it.
• Motives – Before you have the one on one, it’s a good idea to find out the motives of your employees. Just why are they so keen on moving away? Is it the money? Is it the challenge it offers? Are they de-motivated for some reason? Find out before you talk to them.
• New challenges – Every job should constantly offer new challenges and make employees step beyond their boundaries, at least once in a while. Interesting challenges spur employees on and ensure that they derive job satisfaction.
• Motivating factors – If you want to make sure that your employees don’t stray then make sure that there are enough motivating factors in their work life. Offer enough incentives and keep them constantly involved in interesting aspects of their jobs.
• New projects – Try to involve employees in new projects and keep them on their toes so they don’t feel the need to move away. If employees are being increasingly reluctant to take up new projects, it’s a sure sign that they don’t see themselves being with the company for a long time.
• Money – Sometimes a new job is all about the money indeed. Employees often aren’t able to see beyond the proverbial dollar signs. If your employee is worth it, you might want to try offering them a hike.
• Address complaints – If employees are complaining about the workplace, then it’s high time you looked into those complaints and saw how they can be redressed. Unhappy employees are always going to look for reasons to join new workplaces and while you can’t please everyone all of the time, you can attempt to make sure basic problems are at least taken care of.
• Be fair – Be honest to yourself and ask yourself if you’re being completely fair with your employees in terms of compensation, bonuses and perks. Everyone deserves to be compensated fairly for their efforts and this ought to be your prime concern.

Employees are not going to look for other jobs if their basic needs are met at their present workplace. If you want to make sure that your employees don’t start looking for new jobs, then you have to take proactive steps to ensure that they stay with you.

So, if you are looking to retain talented people in your organization, you can work around the salary factor to make it motivating enough for employees. How can you figure out that the salary you’re offering to employees is motivating enough? Here are some tips to help you out.

• Research – The only way to figure out the salary options for your employees is by doing adequate research. Today the methods to conduct research are much easier thanks to the Internet.
• Salary philosophy – Look into your organization’s salary philosophy to understand what you can or cannot do regarding the salaries, and what would be a good option in the given financial situation. Don’t forget that you shouldn’t overstep any bounds in trying to create a motivating salary for your employees
• Comparison – What is the competition offering their employees? If you can do a spot of research about the salary range for similar job positions, you might be able to have a fair idea of what others are paying their employees. You will also be able to deduce what level the salary range you are offering comes under.
• Your motivation – What is your motivation for offering a motivating salary for your employees? Obviously you want their performance to go up and productivity to increase. But is there any specific goal you have in mind which you hope to accomplish by offering better salary options? It’s time to deconstruct your own motivation at this point.
• Salary discussions – There’s nothing you can do to prevent your employees for discussing their salaries with each other. While this is a practice that is frowned upon by many organizations, employees still go ahead and find out who is making more and who is making less. While it’s not possible to enforce a clamp order on your employees not to discuss salary, you could create salary ranges within the organization where people with similar responsibilities and authority are grouped into the same salary range.
• Communication – Keep communication lines open between yourself and your employees. Communicate your salary philosophy to your employees so they know why certain things are the way they are. You can also demonstrate your methods for determining pay so employees can know that you’re being completely fair.

Determining a motivating salary is a tough job for any manager given the volatile situation it can cause if not done properly. Moreover, the opposite can result just as easily when employees get de-motivated by the salary they are offered. So make sure you do your research properly when you set out to do this all important job.

It’s quite common, for example, for a manager to refer to the “men” of the organization, which is no longer appropriate when there are both male and female employees.

Another thing that needs to be considered is the creation of an appropriate behaviour document (for example, outlining sexual harassment policies and definitions). While some women may not be at all offended by sexist jokes (even making some male-directed jokes of their own), others will be offended and upset, especially if they feel the jokes are directed towards them.

Similarly, if there haven’t been appropriate practices for sexual harassment put in place, some men won’t know where to draw the line between what is acceptable to a female employee and what is derogatory or downright threatening.

Sometimes it is a good idea to hire an external consultant who can come into the company and assess the need for change, and help address issues that may make the workplace challenging and uncomfortable for women, and at the same time, help the organisation look at ways they can attract more qualified female employees to ensure there is true equal opportunity in the organisation. This may or may not require the need for educational meetings with employees where appropriate behaviour and boundaries are made clear to all employees and managers in the organisation.

What happens when an organisation is forced to hire women to meet a “gender quota” and there are few qualified women suitable to fill positions? This may be a pressing issue for companies in the Oil & Gas and some niche engineering fields.

There are some fields in which very few women enter, and few are qualified for. Naturally, an employer needs to assure that all his employees are qualified individuals who are suited to the type of work offered. It may be frustrating to many employers that they have to turn down so many qualified men in the search for a female employee who may or may not be up to scratch. It’s extremely important that women should not be hired just to fill a “gap”, any female employees must be hired because of their suitability. If not, hiring them will backfire in the long term. While initially, it may be harder to attract well-qualified women for such roles, over time as more women enter the company it will become easier to attract other women (especially if female employees are able to attend school and university career days and speak with students about their career and their organisation).

While attracting and hiring qualified women in male-dominated industries can prove challenging, if it is handled well it can benefit the industry, and be a positive experience for all employees, male and female alike.

The media of course has constantly led people to believe that Gen Y is all about drugs, sex and iPods. And with the influx of the internet, Gen Y is one of those generations that grew up with it and did not learn it later as an acquired skill that had become an absolute must to survive. All this seems to have stacked the odds against the Gen Y and this is why managers need to learn a bit more about Gen Y-ers so they can manage them successfully and establish the right kind of work relationship between them.

• Open Mind – When managers begin with a closed mind and have fixed notions about Gen Y, then they’re not helping their case. First of all they need to have an open mind and understand that Gen Y-ers are not lazy and have no sense of direction.
• Fair treatment – Gen Y-ers too deserve a chance to prove themselves so make sure you give them that chance before coming to a decision about them. Treat them as adults because they are, and give them a sense of belonging to the team. Don’t be condescending towards them. You will only be widening the bridge between them and you.
• Be a teacher – Gen Y-ers often react favorably to their teachers. So make sure that you constantly provide them with feedback so that their learning curve doesn’t go down at any time. This will also make them feel much better with regards the relationship they have with you. Just remember not to be a patronizing teacher.
• Appreciate – Appreciate them for the work they have done and show them the right way, just as you would with any other person. While on one hand it is a good idea to treat them equally, you would also have to remember that the Gen Y-ers are intrinsically different in many aspects and you would have to keep that in mind while working with them.
• Helping hand – Gen Y-ers brim with confidence and this is born from a need to prove themselves. They would ideally like to accomplish as much as possible in as short a time. Help them meet this need of theirs and you will find that they’re not only grateful, but also won’t feel the need to assert their confidence in ways that you may not approve.
• Loyalty issues – Some people are of the opinion that Gen Y-ers are not a very loyal bunch. This is not true. Gen Y-ers are actually very skeptical of the whole concept of loyalty but that doesn’t mean that they’re disloyal. They can be loyal, provided you compensate them fairly for the work they’ve done.

Working with Gen Y-ers is a wonderful way to learn more about the new generation and finding out what makes them tick.

The downside to it is that improper employee job descriptions can cause more harm than good. It can lead to confusion and create a chaotic atmosphere where no one knows what he or she is supposed to do.

Ideally speaking, a job description is a written statement that describes the duties, responsibilities and required qualifications of a job. But this is not all. It also outlines the skills and competencies that are needed to make sure the job is done properly.

If you thought that a job description was merely just that, a couple of lines describing what is expected from the employee, then you’re only half right. Today, most organizations take employee job descriptions more seriously. Here’s a look at why this is happening today:

• Communication – The employee job description is all about communicating to the employee what is required of them. This is the first step that you take in building a communication level with your employees and the description should be worded aptly so that no mistakes in communication occur. Later employees shouldn’t feel that they misconstrued what you had said.
• Performance check list – The employee job description also acts like a performance check list where you can measure whether an employee has been performing to expectation and how well they have managed to fulfill their duties, as per the job description.
• Legally true – When you make sure that your employee job description is worded accurately and includes all necessary information, it also helps protect you against law suits in the future.
• Saves time – With a correct job description, the person who is applying knows what is expected of him and whether they are the right persons for the job or not. This saves time for you as well when recruiting people.
• Works with existing employees – If your job description is well written then your existing staff will also know what is expected from them and how they’re supposed to perform in accordance with the new hires. When your new recruits and older employees gel well, the result is increased productivity and in the end, everyone is happy.
• Where they fit – Most new employees often feel like they’re flotsam. Random and not really knowing where they belong. A good employee job description can point them to the right direction and show them where they can fit in the larger picture.
• Motivation – Job roles are constantly evolving and it could be the reason for the lack of motivation amongst many employees who were hired for one reason and are doing something else. If companies make it a point to review job descriptions routinely and check if people are doing what they’re supposed to, it can be a great help.

Employee job descriptions are much more than advertising words used to lure new talent to your organization. Make sure you know what you’re doing when you’re framing your employee job descriptions.

An executive recruiter must invest at least four years within a specific industry in order to build a network of sufficient size to facilitate optimal placement for a new candidate. Approximately 70% of successful long-term executive placements are the result of networking. The ideal recruiter will remain in contact with each candidate after placement in order to obtain feedback and further knowledge of the hiring company’s culture. An active recruiter may place 17 candidates during the course of a year. The recruiter can leverage this network, which over four years may have expanded up to 68 hiring managers in as many companies. A network of this scale is often required in order to find the optimal match for a new candidate’s preferences, potential, and personality within a company and work culture that are best suited for that candidate.

The ideal recruiter will specialize within the confines of a particular geography. Candidates desiring to relocate to a particular geographic region are best served by those recruiters or agencies which have a track record of placing candidates in that region. The ideal executive recruiter will have assembled a network of hiring managers within the geographic area and industry of interest to the candidate. In order to provide invaluable service, national or international recruiters or agencies must have established regionally specific hiring networks within a diversity of locations and be able to transfer intimate knowledge of those regions to the prospective candidate.

An executive recruiter must ask the appropriate questions of the candidate. The ideal recruiter will inquire why the candidate is seeking a new position, whether the candidate’s family, spouse, or significant other have been consulted, what the candidate is looking for in a work environment, and what the candidate is seeking with regards to professional responsibilities. This recruiter will also inquire about salary preferences, relocation preferences, and whether the candidate already has contacts at a particular company or companies that the candidate would like to work for.
The ideal recruiter will be personable enough to make the candidate feel comfortable in divulging personal information and motivations. The recruiter who is able to make the candidate feel at ease in this manner is likely to have the same success with hiring managers.

The executive recruiter will provide a proven process through which the candidate will be placed in the ideal position. Optimal recruitment processes are either derived and refined through experience, or are learned from a mentor. A recruiter with at least four years in the business is unlikely to make the same mistakes as a recruiter with less experience or without a knowledgeable mentor. It is important that the recruiter help the candidate to understand and “buy into” the candidate placement process. Executive placements have a significantly higher potential for success with a proven, well formulated approach and a candidate and a recruiter who are motivated to follow it. It is important that the candidate remain cognizant of all activities of the recruiter in order to actively contribute to the success of the placement.

The recruiter should conduct personality and work behavior profiles of the candidate, using standardized methods. The advantage of conducting these profiles is that the candidate can be optimally matched with the work culture that is best suited to the candidate’s temperament and professional behaviors.

An executive recruiter or recruitment agency should go to great lengths to preserve the confidentiality of the candidate. This is particularly important in cases where candidates are currently employed. In these situations, the recruiter must adjust to the schedule constraints of the candidate. Typically this will necessitate that the recruiter contacts the candidate when the candidate is most able to speak freely in an unstressed environment. Executive recruiters who are willing to go to these measures for their clients are the professionals who will best serve them in the candidate placement process.

A good recruiter should check the references of the candidate in a manner that preserves the confidentiality of the candidate. A recruiter who asks for and verifies a candidate’s references can be relied upon to be thorough in the other important aspects of the candidate’s placement. Often by checking the references of the candidate, the recruiter can obtain testimonials that will greatly serve the candidate in winning the desired placement.

The recruiter should assist the candidate in developing resumes that are tailored to the specific positions that the candidate is applying for. The recruiter should work with the candidate to polish the candidate’s interviewing skills. It is not uncommon for otherwise successful professionals to be uncomfortable about discussing their accomplishments. It requires an empathetic and personable recruiter to coach the candidate to make the most of his or her potential. A good recruiter will always debrief a candidate immediately following an interview. It is important for the candidate to communicate their impressions and refine interviewing techniques with the recruiter’s assistance while the candidate’s impressions are still recent. Recruiters who conduct immediate debriefings of a candidate following an interview are much better prepared to assist the candidate with optimal follow up communications with the prospective employer. 

The executive recruiter must assist the candidate with salary negotiations. The recruiter is in the business of negotiating salaries and is usually more proficient in this activity than the candidate. The recruiter should advise the candidate regarding the optimal methods for receiving, negotiating and accepting a job offers and counter offers. This important consulting will include the preparation of appropriately formatted correspondence between the candidate and the prospective employer.

Last but not least, work with an executive recruiter who has real passion for the work!

So, what should you do to ensure that your days in your company are not numbered? Do you have a strategy? If not, what are you waiting for? The name of the game today is being prepared for any eventuality.  Being prepared takes away the edge of even the nastiest of surprises. So, here’s what you can probably do if you want to secure your job.

• Keep eyes and ears open – At the workplace today, it’s no longer enough if you come, do your job and go back home. You need to be more aware of what is happening so that you are not caught unawares of any new development. 
• Competent – Become more competent. Learn new skills or take classes and learn the new software that the company has recently acquired. By doing all this, you’re showing employers that you are interested in improving your skills to benefit the company.
• Earn your pay – Employers often see people in just one view. Are they adding any value? Are the earning their pay? Ensure that you work doubly hard to prove to bosses that you’re perfectly entitled to your salary.
• Become valuable – Although it’s easier said than done, try and become valuable to the company. Make sure that whatever job you do, you’re adding value and the bosses know about it.
• Compromise – In severe situations, have you thought of compromising your salary in order to stay on in the company? Is getting less salary better than getting no salary? Absolutely. However, you have to make sure you do this correctly and approach the bosses without looking desperate.
• Exude confidence – Even in dire situations, maintain a calm exterior and exude confidence and poise. Looking harried will not help you in any way.
• Stop complaining – No one loves a whiner. Especially not now when the company is really floundering and only the best are being retained. Make sure you have a positive attitude at all times.
• Communicate – Communicate your ideas to your superiors instead of merely thinking about them. Sometimes good ideas come from unexpected quarters and you can be sure that your bosses will appreciate all the help they can get.
• Dress to impress – Despite all that’s happening and even though you’re faced with the possibility of losing your job, maintain your wardrobe as before and always be a natty dresser. Sloppiness is hard to digest, especially when everything else is going wrong.

Every company is not the same so the same strategies might not apply everywhere. But what you can do is be more proactive in every possible way and see every situation as an opportunity.

• Orientation – Ensure that your HR organizes a proper orientation program for the newbies so they will not feel as green as they probably are. The orientation will also make them feel a part of the organization which goes a long way in making them feel comfortable.
• Meeting – Have a meeting where they can quickly introduce themselves and you can immediately get them started. Tell them your immediate goals and how they can help you achieve them. Holding a meeting like this boosts morale and makes the employees feel useful and valued.
• Work area – Ensure that new employees are assigned work areas immediately and they do not have to wait in the reception or probably share a cubicle with other older employees. This can make them feel unwanted and will definitely make them form a bad impression about your company.
• On hand supervisor – Make sure that the supervisor for the employee is on hand. Nothing could be worse for a new employee to join the organization when the supervisor is on leave or worse, on vacation.
• Employee handbook – Ensure that you give the new employees a copy of the employee handbook as it would have all necessary information pertaining to them.
• Nose on the grind – Don’t assign them to a team that has to meet an important deadline in just two days. They will simply be in the way and the experience for them will also not be very pleasant.
• Unrelated job – Sometimes, just to make sure that employees are not on the bench, they get assigned jobs that no one really wants. It’s really not fair to the employee or you when they are assigned a job that is not related to their core competency just because it’s there and no one else is ready to do it.
• Introductions – You may not realize it, but nothing could be worse for a new employee than to start off their first day at work without knowing the people around them. So no matter how busy you are, stop for a moment and introduce them to those who will work with them and those who will share their work areas as well.
• Presentations – Presentations are important but try to limit them because no new employee wants to spend the whole day listening to presentations about how great the company is. Some people could even switch off mentally and you could lose the opportunity to find out what they’re really like and what their core competencies are.
• Ice breaker – The first day is always a little difficult for both, new hire and you. It would help greatly if you have an ice breaker of sorts which would make them feel less strained about being in a new working environment. If you can assemble all the new hires together, a simple way would be to tell them their name with an adjective that describes them, preferably starting with the same letter as their name, for example Resourceful Ronnie.

Making your new hires feel at home is important because unless they feel comfortable, they’re not going to perform their best.

The HR is quite like the door which candidates have to face before they can enter your company. If the door itself doesn’t budge and has an unwelcoming outlook, they’re obviously going to turn elsewhere. Why is this happening? You need to sit down with your HR team and discuss the different possibilities as well as its reasons before you determine what can be done about it.

Most often, HR managers themselves are not well trained. So, start at the root when you search out the reasons why your company is not getting good talent. Here are some of the reasons why the interviewers behave badly and what you could possibly do about it:

• Poor training – As suggested, some HR managers themselves are not properly trained when dealing with candidates. Often, companies are so shortchanged for HR people that they put them on the job without really checking to see their suitability and attitude. It’s important to train HR managers adequately in the art of interviewing candidates because it is indeed an art.
• Face of the company – To the candidates appearing for an interview, the HR managers are the face of the company and they represent what it stands for. So you have to make sure that they know this aspect. Even if the person attending the candidate is probably someone of no consequence, you wouldn’t want them to go back with an unfavorable impression of your company do you?
• Etiquette lessons – It’s no harm to make sure that your HR managers and hiring team have a basic lesson in etiquette which would show them how to behave courteously with candidates and to let them down easily if they do not make it.
• Reasons – It’s also a good idea if you can delve for the reasons and see why your hiring team is behaving so abominably with interviewees. The reasons could also be that their team is small and not able to withstand the pressures put on them. Probably they don’t have enough people at their disposal and hence the pressure to maintain the tight schedule results in rude behavior? Of course this is no valid excuse and you need to clear up the problem at its very root.
• Not caring enough – Often, some people tend to use HR as a stepping stone in their career, so they can inveigle themselves in the company in a position that suits them later on. Usually, such people might not be really bothered about their own behavior towards other candidates.

The reasons could be plenty but it’s something important to consider when you realize that your interviewers are repelling away all the top talent instead of attracting them to the company.

• Exude confidence – Sometimes older people tend to portray themselves as under confident especially when faced with a much younger work force. They’re already giving up before the battle has started. So don’t make that mistake and make sure you brim with confidence, no matter what your age, because underneath it all, you know how to do your job.
• Against the stereotype – Older people are often stereotyped in various ways. They’re usually viewed as being scornful of the younger generation and more importantly, people think that they are resistant to change. So, you have to work against this stereotype to prove that you are nothing like that and that you can gel very well with the younger set.
• Learn – It’s never too late to learn. You don’t have to be a genius to learn how to use computers and even though this can be self taught, you can also enroll in a course if you want to learn everything the proper way. This way, you will be at an advantage.
• No self deprecation – People sometimes dig their own graves when they make remarks like, ‘In my generation, we did things this way’ or ‘I don’t know how you young people manage it’. You are immediately giving scope to the interviewer to slot you amongst the oldies who cannot even fend for themselves.
• Lose the dates, keep the experience – Don’t make it a point to mention all the dates in your resume. Stick to important facts relevant with your experience in the field and not the year you finished university. In fact, don’t use a chronological list in your resume. Try to make sure you highlight your experience and not when you got it.
• Go low profile – Sometimes bigger organizations might not be your cup of tea. In fact if you are headed into the job market after a few years’ sabbatical, it could be a bad idea to try and make the plunge into a big organization. Plenty of things in the world of management have changed in the recent years and you might feel like a fish out of the water. A good idea would be to try your luck in smaller organizations where they are more flexible and open to the idea of experienced individuals as opposed to ‘aged’ individuals.

Today’s world might be full of a younger workforce. But it’s also the place where internet and telecommuting have helped many a person get a job, despite their age. Remember, age is just a number.