What Does Recruiting Have to Do with Retention?

From our featured guest blogger Lynne Mayers, Director, Corporate Leadership Council:

Back when I was a member of the CLC Recruiting research team, I had many conversations around how Recruiting can add value and be a “strategic partner” to the business. The focus then as now was: deliver high quality hires fast and cost effectively; drive workforce planning; support development of competitive employment brands.

Now that I work across our CLC practice areas and talk to Heads of HR and Talent, I see a couple of additional opportunities for Recruiting to act as a strategic partner. One of them is retention of high performers and high potentials.

So what does recruiting have to do with retention?

Our CLC Human Resources data shows that one in three high potentials is currently planning on leaving his or her job in the next 12 months. And organizations are making some fatal mistakes with respect to high potential management, driving those risk levels up.

Some line leaders, though, remain unconvinced that retention is a burning issue. One Head of HR we work with recently shared how his CEO had been galvanized into action when his own daughter announced her decision to leave her employer for a rival organization and went through 4 or 5 “exit interviews” designed primarily to woo her back. Of course by that time it was too late—and she told her father that if the organization had put half as much effort into keeping her before she decided to leave as they put into wooing her back after she announced her intention to leave, she wouldn’t have been looking in the first place.

What does this have to do with Recruiting? Not all line leaders will have the benefit of that “aha” moment before they start losing their best talent. But Recruiting is close to the decisions that candidates make, and how they feel as they make them.

As you successfully dislodge talent from their current employers you are in a position to learn: what drove their decision to leave; what did they struggle with; and how did their organization react when they announced their decision to leave? You can use this not only to help inform retention plans for the individuals that you woo, but also to share with your partners in HR so they can bring to life for their line clients the potential risks they face, and the dangers of assuming that all’s well with their top talent.

In other words, sometimes it takes more than data to make a business case—sometimes a great story can make people sit up and think. Do you have some great stories to share?