This week in Careers, we explored the extreme importance of keeping employees happy and healthy, and heard from representatives of some of the most successful tech companies in the world.
In the ‘war’ for tech talent, employers often go to incredible lengths to lure professionals such as engineers. They are gold dust. Their skills are as necessary as they are in limited supply among the labour force.
Yet it would be remiss to assume that the work is done once a contract is signed and a swipe card is passed over a desk. The war isn’t won by getting engineers; it is won by keeping them.
Employers, in turn, tend to have various strategies for keeping employees. Good benefits, catered lunches, lush in-house facilities and flexible working hours are all standard at top tech firms. Yet as New Relic’s Rachel Klein explained in an illuminating article this week, the on-boarding process could become a company’s greatest asset in keeping their best and brightest. Something as simple as expressing gratitude to new recruits for their hard work could cement a desire to stay with a company longer.
It all boils down to ensuring that the people working in a company feel valued, seen and appreciated. It is a philosophy that Globoforce espouses to the many clients on its roster and expresses in its own office too, as we learned this week, by allowing its employees to flourish and flex their creativity.
Encouraging work-life balance is also key to retaining star employees. It was an element of her new role at BD that Priyanka Chilveri found to be incredibly helpful while she was navigating settling herself and her family into their new hometown.
Another excellent way to make employees feel more valued is to invest in their development. Alison Kilbane, a quality assurance specialist at MSD, benefitted from having the company support her when she decided to return to her studies and gain further qualifications.
All of the above aligns well with the predictions made by recruitment specialists Hays regarding what trends will shape the workplace in 2019. Things like a flexible wellbeing policy, the further proliferation of AI, age diversity and more are all set to colour the workplace of the future.
For more on any of these stories, check out the links above
Want stories like this and more direct to your inbox? Sign up for Tech Trends, Silicon Republic’s weekly digest of need-to-know tech news.
