7 ways to hire and retain safety-conscious employees

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Creating a safe workplace is something that everyone should strive towards. For employers in construction and manufacturing, building a strong workplace culture of safety is critical to the long-term sustainability of your business. Creating safe workplaces lowers worker’s compensation claims, reduces risks and potential accidents and is part of employers’ legal obligations.

Not to mention, potential candidates are more likely to choose employers who emphasise and promote safe workplaces. But how do you find the best team members with the right mindset and attitudes toward safety?

Here are seven ways to hire safety-conscious employees and create a safe workplace.

1. Make a culture of safety and creating a safe workplace part of your employer brand

If safety is one of your core values, it should naturally be expressed as part of your employer brand and Employee Value Proposition. Establishing strong brand messaging enables you to attract like-minded team members with shared values, allowing you to build a strong workplace culture of safety.

Regularly reinforce and amplify this value through your various channels, for example, through employee profile stories and social posts.

2. Include brand messaging around safety in your recruitment advertisements

A strong employer brand will be reflected in your recruitment advertisements. Make a safe workplace a key focus in your ad copy and showcase it as part of your Employee Value Proposition.

3. Include a screening question around safety

Attraction is the first part of the process; when it comes to screening, the fastest way for you to identify the top applicants in your pool who share a safety-focus is by including screening questions. Including a question around candidates’ safety focus allows them to demonstrate how they prioritise safety in their work.

4. Ask questions around safety priorities during second-stage interviews

After assessing candidates’ screening-question answers, second-stage interviews are an excellent opportunity to delve deeper into their experience and understand their values and priorities.

Here are some examples of questions you can use during second-stage interviews to explore candidate’s safety-focus more deeply.

Example 1: “Safety is of the utmost importance in this role and our organisation. How do you always ensure safety within your work?”

Example 2: “How do you promote health and safety practices among co-workers?

5. Offer consistent training

Structured training is vital to prevent accidents and serious injuries, so it’s likely your organisation has OHS training as part of your new hires’ induction. Leading with this safety focus is a great way to create a safe workplace, establish expectations for your new team members and make them feel comfortable and motivated about their new role.

While onboarding training is a great place to start, consistent training is an effective long-term strategy to reinforce your organisational and brand values.

If you experience challenges with participation and engagement, adjust your delivery. Some people may need to learn how to operate a piece of machinery, others will learn how to fix it. But everyone need to understand how to deal with an electrical fire. Your team members will be more willing to engage with and accept training when they understand its direct impact on their lives and how it serves their benefit.

6. Use incentives and rewards

Gain better results and establish a workplace culture of safety by offering rewards and incentives for using safety procedures properly. One way is to report and share information about decreased injuries and accidents. (But use this strategically so it doesn’t make employees reluctant to report workplace incidents.)

7. Provide the right support and equipment

While training is useful and effective, it must be reinforced with support and good equipment. While Australia has many mandatory rules and regulations, go above and beyond safety laws to provide support and good equipment in ways that are unique to your business. Regularly talk about first aid kits, helmets, fire safety, vehicle and machine-specific protocols, and other elements relevant to your business.

Demonstrating your commitment to create a safe workplace communicates to your current and future talent that you care about their health, safety and wellbeing. Including a safety-focus as part of your employer brand, screening and training processes, will empower you to build a strong culture of workplace safety.

Do you need a recruitment campaign to attract the best candidates to your vacancy? Schedule a discussion with our Recruitment Advertising Specialists.

Reducing employee turnover in retail

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According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the retail sector currently employs over 1,286,100 people, which accounts for around 9.9% of the total workforce. Over the past five years, employment in the industry has increased by around 4.1%, however despite this, retail employee turnover is still relatively high.

In this article, we examine a range of strategies to reduce employee turnover, how to minimise risk factors, and how to harness recruitment best practices to positively impact your organisation’s bottom line.

Understand the key causes 

Employees move on for a range of reasons, some of which may be out of your control. However, minimising employee turnover can often be a simple as identifying employees that aren’t the right ‘fit’ and formulating strategies to retain those that are.

Good communication can offer these insights, including holding one-on-one meetings which can provide an open forum for employees to discuss the positives and negatives of their job, including instigating a discussion about hours, wages and even advancement.

Employee surveys can also gauge employee satisfaction, particularly if conducted by an outside source that can provide anonymity and therefore encourage honesty and valuable feedback.

And while it’s often difficult to let an employee go, it can be an opportunity to gather insights via an exit interview. This can include a discussion about why they are leaving, what they liked/disliked about their job and the company and what improvements they would suggest that might help retain future employees.

Increase motivation

Employees who leave organisations, including those in the retail sector, often do so because they are not offered a clear career path or an opportunity to develop their skills. This is especially prevalent with Millennials (employees born between 1980 and 1994).

Positive recruitment strategies include offering retail workers more responsibility to make them feel more engaged and empowered, and it also demonstrates that you trust and value them. Offering career advancement in the form of a promotion or a position of leadership can increase motivation and it rewards employees for performance.

Retail organisation can also create open dialogue about future opportunities, encourage a culture of promoting internally and offer mentoring or training programs to increase education and new skills.

Reward loyalty

Regular pay rises and bonuses are a valuable way of retaining retail employees, however other incentives also work. These can range from tailored Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and perks like regular flexitime, to free food, gym memberships, financial planning advice and social team building activities.

Aside from assisting with attracting new top talent, rewarding loyalty can also enhance your organisation’s culture and increase employee productivity. The key is to promote employee wellbeing and a sense of purpose across all aspects of their lives, including in their financial security, social relationships, physical health and community involvement. 

Hire carefully

Taking the time to hire the right person saves time, money and stress in the long run, however it does require a carefully thought-out recruitment strategy. This is particularly true in the retail sector when it comes to hiring for seasonality or diversity.

Reduce employee turnover and positively impact your bottom line by understanding the key causes, minimising risk factors, structuring attractive bonuses and incentives and using a strong recruitment strategy.

Interested in learning more about screening, shortlisting and selection best practices? Contact an Employment Office Recruitment Specialist on info@employmentoffice.com.au or 1300 366 573.

60-day check-in questions for your new hires

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Are you conducting 60-day check-ins with your new hires? They’re a great opportunity to ensure your new team members are making a good start in your organisation and leverage feedback to improve your processes. Here’s a list of 60-day check-in questions for your new hires, to guide you in your conversations. 

It’s exciting to welcome a great new hire into your organisation to benefit from their skills and experience, and add to your existing teams and culture. You may have already conducted a 30-day check-in. The 60-day mark is another good opportunity to assess their progress and ensure they’re feeling challenged and engaged. 

By understanding if your new team members are meeting their targets and feeling fulfilled in their role, you can provide them with the support and attention they need and deserve, and avoid the negative consequences of needing to rehire. In addition to assessing their performance, take the time to understand and measure their happiness at work and within your culture. You can also use their feedback to improve your employer branding strategies and your onboarding and training process for future hires. 

60-day check-in questions for your new hires

  • What do you like most about your team and our organisation? 
  • Are we meeting your expectations? Is your job what you expected it to be?
  • Have you experienced any issues in meeting your responsibilities? If so, what are they?
  • How did you find your experience coming onboard with us? 
  • Did you have any positive or negative feedback about the process? Is there anything that you recommend we continue doing or change for future hires? 
  • Do you feel confident that your training has set you up for success? 
  • Do you have all the information, tools and resources you require to perform your job well? 
  • Do you feel challenged in your role? 
  • Do you feel fulfilled in your role and want to stay with us? 
  • Do you feel as if you have all the support you need to be successful in this role? Is there anything else we can do to help? 

Conducting 60-day check-ins will ensure your new hires make a great start in your organisation and helps you leverage feedback to improve your processes. Use these catch-ups as opportunities to provide support, understand challenges from their perspective and obtain recommendations for improvement. 

Looking for more advice ways you can improve your employer brand? Have a read of our employer branding guide or call us to speak to a specialist on 1300 366 573.

Preventing burnout in NFP and healthcare 

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The NFP and healthcare sectors are some of the most at-risk occupations of burnout. Here are the main causes and some strategies for preventing burnout to protect your team members, improve workplace happiness, increase productivity and retain great talent. 

According to Safe Work Australia, social, health and welfare support workers are the most at-risk occupations for mental health issues. When hiring and nurturing employees, it is important to prioritise their mental health to retain them over the long-term; not to mention, attract more great talent in the future. 

Burnout is characterised by emotional exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectiveness in the workplace and chronic negative responses to stressful workplace conditions. 

While not considered a mental illness, burnout can be considered a mental health issue. 

Here are some of the top reasons why NFP and Healthcare workers can experience this problem and ways of preventing burnout. 

Burnout is more likely when employees:

  • expect too much of themselves
  • feel as if they work they are doing is not good enough
  • feel inadequate or incompetent
  • feel unappreciated for their efforts in the workplace
  • have unreasonable demands placed upon them
  • are in roles that are not a good fit.

Recognise the signs and symptoms 

Could you recognise the above symptoms in your team members? While prevention is the most powerful solution, it’s important to recognise reduced energy and enthusiasm, lack of motivation and increased errors. Other symptoms can include irritability and increased absenteeism. 

Left unaddressed, burnt out team members can deteriorate into decreased productivity, increase risk of accidents, low workplace morale and increase turnover. 

Offer counselling and support services 

Offer your team members outlets to gain emotional support (i.e. by offering an external counselling service or support groups) or running physical or creative activities specifically designed for stress release. 

Assess workloads and establish reasonable expectations  

For not-for-profit and healthcare organisations, more often than not, there will be competing priorities and limited resources. Can you assess what activities require the highest standards and when is it okay to lower the bar and still meet organisational requirements? 

Use good communication to establish workloads and ensure your team members feel comfortable with their delivery. Use conversations are a chance to check-in and ensure your team members are not expecting unreasonable workloads of themselves. Encourage regular breaks and ensure you are not expecting team members to consistently work overtime. Establish boundaries and enforce reasonable work hours if necessary. 

Encourage social support, respect and physical activity

Fostering a sense of community and inclusivity in your workplace will increase retention over the long term. Support and respect in and between teams will improve happiness and productivity. Promoting physical activity in the workplace has been proven to lower the risk of chronic disease and increase employee engagement and productivity.  Provide training and resources 

Train your leadership team to assess for symptoms of burnout and know how to provide support to your team members. (Also, it may be worth providing training to your leaders to help them understand how harmful behaviour can have negative consequences on co-workers). 

Provide professional development and ongoing training to ensure all your team members feel competent and comfortable in their roles.\

Offer reward and recognition

Do you currently offer your people reward and recognition through things such as awards nights, events or social posts to celebrate small wins? Reward and recognition solves the problem of your people feeling as if their work is unappreciated or unnoticed. 

Communicate with your team members to help them understand how their work plays a valuable role in delivering your overarching purpose. 

While strategies, such as encouraging social support and physical activity, are powerful and effective, they cannot be treated as a bandaid solution to unreasonable workloads and expectations. Train your leadership team to recognise the symptoms of burnout and provide support. Provide training and offer your people reward and recognition so they feel appreciated understand the value of their work. 

Preventing burnout will improve the happiness and satisfaction of your current team members, increase retention and empower you to attract more great talent to your organisation over the long term. 

Schedule a discussion with our Recruitment Specialists here, call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

Retain great talent: Strategies to foster employee loyalty

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When you’re running a recruitment campaign, candidate attraction is most likely at the forefront of your thinking. Don’t let employee retention become an afterthought. Here are three simple strategies to improve employee retention and increase employee loyalty. 

Employee retention isn’t something you start working on during a recruitment campaign or when you’ve hired a candidate. Fostering employee loyalty should be continuous! Retaining great talent is the foundation of organisational success, because after all, you recruit great talent to retain great talent. So, here are three great employee retention strategies you can implement today.

Invest in your teams

Your first thought about investing might be money – but it’s much more than that. It’s also about time. Invest time in developing your teams, using team building to foster teamwork and productivity.

If you already invest time and resources into your existing teams, share this through your recruitment advertisements to attract great candidates. Top talent wants to see how their work may be valued and how they can develop in your organisation.

It’s no wonder that when your teams are disengaged, productivity decreases. Research reveals that 70% of employees aren’t engaged in their roles which creates an estimated cost of $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity per year. Investing time into your team will increase productivity and overall work happiness, saving your organisation money and giving you the ability to retain great people

Empower your teams

Empowering your team is a great way to demonstrate trust. According to Forbes, employees who feel empowered or have a level of autonomy within their roles feel more engaged in their jobs than those who do not.

“Employees who felt a low level of empowerment were rated with engagement at the 24th percentile, whereas those with a high level of empowerment were at the 79th percentile. Clearly, empowerment counts.”

So how can you empower your team? Share their successes on your social media channels and provide incentives as a reward for meeting targets.

Sharing how you appreciate their effort and hard work in day-to-day conversations too.

For example, one of your team members may not have performed so well in a quarter. Express that you fully appreciate their efforts and expect they will learn from this result. Offer them support in areas they may need it and consider if any workplace or personal problems may have impacted their results. Great leadership fosters employee loyalty over the long-term. Employees should feel valued and empowered to improve even after a tough conversation about KPIs and results.

Provide excellent leadership and support

Leadership is arguably one of the most important elements of candidate retention. Employees remain loyal to great leaders. Continue to develop and improve your leadership skills, offer support, and understand on a deep level what your employees want from leaders.

In addition to this, consider offering additional support to candidates and new hires too. The recruitment process can be stressful for candidates, so offering your support during the onboarding process and demonstrating great leadership while they navigate their initial few weeks is essential to making a great impression. Continue this support as they become more autonomous in their decision making is vital.

Focusing on these three elements will nurture a positive workplace environment for loyal employees to thrive.

The overarching theme of retention is empowering your people. If your people feel empowered in their role and the organisation, they are more likely to stay loyal to the brand and become advocates. This makes talent attraction much easier over the long term. Investing in your team, building trust and providing support where required will create an empowered and loyal workforce who are in it for the long run.

Schedule a discussion with our Recruitment Specialists, call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

3 ways personality tests improve productivity and retention

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Personality tests are a powerful and effective way to inform your final hiring decision. But instead of considering it as a selection tool, why not consider it as a way to improve productivity and retention too? 

You may be familiar with personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), which are a great way to gain a deeper understanding of your top shortlisted candidates. While personality tests shouldn’t make or break your hiring decision, they can inform your decision. Personality tests are also a great method of improving productivity and retention by helping you better understand new hires, your current team, the way they think and who they’ll work well with. Here are the benefits you can expect to see by using personality testing as a retention tool. 

1. Improved communication and understanding 

Gaining a better understanding of the way you and your team members think will help you understand the best way to work well together. By becoming aware of the small and major differences in your thought processes, you can identify the best ways to brief them for new tasks or help them overcome shortfalls.

For example, if you are a sensory thinker and your team member is an intuition-based thinker, the way you phrase a brief may affect the way they understand the task.  By using personality insights, you can drastically improve communication in your team, obtain buy-in an increase productivity.

2. Improved work style 

A personality test may reveal you prefer thinking in a “judging manner”, meaning you like to be organised and make a clear plan. On the other hand, you may discover your team member prefers thinking in a “perceiving approach”, that is, big picture thinking, instead of focusing on the smaller details. As a team, this probably means you’ll disagree about strategy and may have to compromise a lot; but understanding their personality and working style can enable you to complement each other’s strengths and work in a style that helps you reach your end goal. 

Understanding people’s preferred way to work will give you a road map on how to accomplish projects and tasks (thus increasing productivity!). 

3. Resolving personality clashes 

Unfortunately, personality clashes between colleagues can drive people out of an organisation. By conducting personality testing, everyone in your team will understand how their way of thinking fits with others, which can improve communication and understanding. This arms you and your team members with the knowledge and skills to reach compromises, diffuse situation, communicate effectively and work well together. 

For more information on how personality testing can improve productive and retention in your organisation, speak to one of our Shortlisting and Selection Specialists today. Call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

Techniques for retention: Rural and remote healthcare

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One of the more difficult healthcare areas to recruit for are those healthcare facilities within rural and remote areas of Australia, so when you’ve successfully recruited, how can you retain?

According to 2019 research conducted by SARRAH for the NSW Ministry of Health; ‘Factors that influence retention are broadly categorised as professional and organisational, social (family and personal), and financial. These are modifiable to varying extent.’ So, there are many factors which broadly influence a person’s decision to remain working within a remote healthcare facility.

Here’s a few ways you can improve employee retention rates in your remote or rural healthcare facility:

Professional and Organisational Factors

  • Provide a professional incentive to remain. Is there any way your organisation can provide the individual with the incentive of professional development through the ability to complete courses relevant to their line of work?
  • Promote and recognise the work the individual is doing. Highlight how they are really making a difference to the community they are within and their commitment to serving others.
  • Provide mentorships and support to the individuals. Rural and remote healthcare facilities have small teams and often the ability to mentor and emotionally support an individual, especially when their work is high-pressured can increase their likelihood of remaining within your organisation.

Social Factors

  • Focusing on family, if the employee has children, is there any way your organisation can support their education or their childcare costs. This will ease the pressures your employee may face when considering their roles impact on their family.
  • Offering incentives that relate to teamwork and team bonding. Your team is likely to be smaller than that of regional facilities. Are there ways you can provide your team with social incentives, such as quarterly team celebrations and/or team day trips out of your rural location.

Financial Factors

  • While housing can often be cheaper than within cities and inner regional Australia, rural and remote areas can be more expensive for general supplies and things like fuel. If your organisation is able to ease these pressures for employees, this may increase retention. This doesn’t need to be monetary; it could be as simple as providing your employees with breakfast each day or subsidising the cost of fuel when travelling to work.
  • Offering monetary incentives such as a yearly review of pay may help your team feel like their work is valued and that you recognise their worth.
  • Non-monetary incentives like flexible working opportunities and the offer of more than the average holiday days without a change in pay, can help your employees be happier with their work life balance (and therefore their work happiness) without affecting their finances.

Need help with your recruitment process?

Speak to our recruitment experts at Employment Office today. We offer recruitment services that help with end-to-end process and can both advise and execute your next recruitment campaign without removing your control of the process. Call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au today.