Bryony Gibson, director of Bryony Gibson Consulting, explains why businesses struggling to fill vacancies should look beyond recruitment.
Typically, recruitment starts with an email you didn’t want to receive. Cue internal meetings, a scramble to work out who can cover the workload, what the impact on clients will be, and how quickly you can replace them with someone good.
Having recruited for accountancy practices for more than 20 years, I hear that last question a lot. But if recruitment challenges keep recurring, it’s also worth considering whether retention might be part of the picture.
There’s no doubt finding good people has become harder. Salaries have risen, candidate expectations have changed, and, in the case of experienced accountants, the best people generally have lots of choice when they come to market. But if other firms are managing to attract and retain the people you’re losing, it could be time to look closer to home.
Why are people leaving?
Of course, salary is sometimes the reason, but in my experience it’s rarely the only one. People leave because they’re frustrated with their manager, can’t see where their career is going, feel undervalued, or want greater flexibility.
And by the time somebody has accepted another job, it’s too late. Which means the conversation about keeping your best people needs to happen long before the resignation letter arrives.
Find out what matters most.
Your existing team is one of your biggest assets. They know your clients, your systems, and how the business really works. They’ve built relationships and accumulated knowledge that a new starter simply can’t replace overnight, which makes it worth understanding what would make them want to stay.
It sounds simple, but when was the last time you asked someone how things are going?
If you want to retain people and keep them engaged, you need to know where they want to be in a year or two, what frustrates them, and what you and the business can do better.
Do they understand how they can progress? Would they benefit from more flexibility? When did you last benchmark salaries to make sure you’re still competitive?
None of this is ground-breaking stuff. The difficult part is creating the time and culture to have those conversations honestly.
Good retention makes recruitment easier.
The North East is a relatively small place, and people talk. Candidates notice when the same company continually recruits for the same positions. And the opposite is also true.
Businesses where people stay and progress tend to become easier to recruit for. A good retention reputation becomes part of your employer brand, whether you’ve consciously built one or not.
And retention starts during recruitment. If the role, culture, progression or flexibility somebody was sold at interview has little resemblance to the reality six months later, you’ve potentially created your next vacancy almost as soon as you’ve finished filling the current one.
Naturally, people will leave, and circumstances change. Sometimes moving on is right for everyone, so good retention doesn’t mean zero staff turnover. It means not losing good people for reasons you could have addressed.
The firms that recruit well understand this. They don’t start thinking about talent when somebody resigns. They keep close to the market, understand what people want, and maintain relationships with recruiters throughout the year.
That means when an exceptional person becomes available, they hear about them first, rather than waiting until a vacancy forces them to look.
Recruitment shouldn’t start with a resignation letter, but if you find yourself continually replacing good people, perhaps the most important question isn’t ‘Where will we find the next one?’ It’s ‘Why did we lose the last one?’