Why Your Company Needs A Re-recruiting Strategy

Employers can expect to see an extraordinary amount of employee turnover over the next few years. Yes, according to the findings of a study by the Hay Group in conjunction with the Centre for Economics and Business Research there is going to be sharp increase in global employee turnover, following years of relative stability. So, far the researchers have observed a 12.9% increase in world-wide employee turnover between 2012 and 2014 and they are expecting average global employee turnover rates to rise from 20.6% to 23.4%. over the next 3 years.

This news should send shock waves through the HR community as we are about to see one of the biggest talent transfers we have seen in the history of HR. This means that large numbers of talented employees will migrate from organizations with weak retention strategies to those organizations with strong attraction strategies. This means that the organizations with the best retention strategies will soon start stock-piling talent, suggesting that retention strategies may be one of the key drivers of competitive advantage over the next few years. And employers need to act now and enhance their strategies to ensure that they remain on the right side of this massive transfer of talent.

But such is the scale of the impending staff retention issues, employers may need to go beyond traditionally defensive loyalty and retention strategies – and they may need to adopt a more offensive and proactive re-recruiting strategy.

So, what is re-recruiting? Re-recruiting is about reinvigorating staff and re-generating the excitement and engagement levels which existed when the employee first walked in the door, which is the time they were most attracted to the organization, most engaged and at least risk of leaving. As you reengage these kind of employees, you will in the process retain top talent that may be at risk of leaving.

Many of you may think that this already occurs with succession planning. But, you should not confuse succession planning with re-recruiting as re-recruiting goes beyond the traditional succession planning model, which only tends to focus on high potentials, (perhaps the top 10%) and  leaves the middle 70% and the bottom 20% generally under-developed, disfranchised and  more vulnerable to premature departure.

With re-recruiting you proactively target all employees, looking for flight risks and disengaged employees and trying to rebuild their careers and interests by offering them career development opportunities such as: projects, new jobs that could excite them and re-ignite their passion. You could even have a retention team which employees have the option of contacting if the organizational development processes have failed them and they are contemplating leaving. This team could be equipped with stretch assignments and career development opportunities which they can assign to employees, pulling them back from the brink of resignation and reengaging them.

A re-ignited and re-engaged employee is a successfully rehired employee who will stay with you organization and drive it forwards.

And a company wide policy of re-recruiting disengaged staff at all levels of the business is the most effective and progressive HR strategy that HR teams can employ to combat the impending perfect storm of employee turnover instability.