Yet, 36 percent of employees report that they are not aware of any avenues for providing feedback to their employers. Using a variety of employee feedback collection methods is an effective way to show how much you value your workers’ input.

Benefits of Employee Feedback

The best employee feedback programs drive organizational development and improvement. Frontline employees often have a better sense of what customers want from your services and products. You never know when an employee in your midst is sitting on a great idea that could lead to improved efficiency or a great new idea for product development⁠ — unless you ask them.

To foster an environment where employees feel safe giving you their honest feedback, you need to assure them that their feedback will be considered and acted upon. One of the best ways to convince your workforce of your commitment to employee feedback is to share the data you derive from all methods of employee data collection with them.

This means that data needs to be collected in ways that allow for easy-to-understand reporting on results, for example, you’re more likely to be alerted to potential problems and learn of possible workplace improvements if you provide a variety of employee feedback collection methods throughout the year.

Avenues to Report Potential Wrongdoing

The best work environments stay that way by providing employees with ways to report wrongdoing. This includes providing opportunities to alert leadership about issues ranging from unethical business practices to failures on issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or gender-based harassment, which data suggests affects at least 50 percent of women in the workplace during any given year.

An effective whistleblower policy should include several ways for employees to come forward when they fear that something damaging is going on within your organization, including anonymous avenues to express concern. Another great way to take the internal pulse of your organization is to establish employee resource groups (ERGs). Also, referred to as affinity groups, these collections of employees meet independent of leadership to address crucial issues, such as wellness or DEI. ERGs are often tasked with collecting feedback from coworkers and presenting it to senior leadership.

Employee Feedback Collection Methods

New Employee Surveys

Early encouragement to give candid feedback sets the tone for newly hired employees, dispelling any hint that yours is a workplace that operates in secrecy, but rather one that encourages candor, transparency, and the open exchange of ideas without fear of penalty.

New employees have a unique vantage point within your company because they are less enmeshed in the culture and more likely to see things early on in their tenure that they would be likely to miss or take for granted once they become more integrated into your way of doing things.

Pulse Surveys

One increasingly popular employee feedback collection method is pulse surveys, frequent short surveys typically on targeted topics. You can promote them as a way to break up the workday. Their frequency helps to foster a culture of feedback and reinforces your commitment to hearing from workers at all levels. You can also track how employee viewpoints on key issues evolve over time and share your findings with employees in newsletters and on your workplace website.

One-on-One Manager Meetings

Results from these employee feedback collection methods are likely to be more qualitative and narrative than quantitative, but you can still integrate yes-no and ranked answer questions into documentation for these meetings that will allow you to gather quantifiable data that can be analyzed across departments and over time to look for patterns and track feedback.

In addition to performance reviews, encourage managers to hold brief weekly or biweekly check-ins with their direct reports, where, in addition to determining status on work projects, they make sure to ask about issues of wellness and engagement.

Employee Suggestions

Consider installing a prominent tab on your intranet to remind employees that they can make suggestions at any time. You may even want to work with IT to allow employees the option of either sending an anonymous suggestion or taking full credit for their ideas. Or you can go the more traditional route of placing boxes at multiple locations throughout your workplace, with plenty of pens and notepads nearby.

Management Surveys

Make it clear to your management ranks that feedback is essential. This includes gathering feedback from across various management levels and assuring managers that this feedback will be seriously considered by senior leadership. Make sure that a key member of your leadership team takes ownership of gathering and acting on feedback to signal the importance of these initiatives at every level of your organization.

Stay and Exit Interviews

As disappointing as it is to learn that a valued employee is considering an offer from another employer, these situations can also present an opportunity for implementing candid, useful employee feedback collection methods.

When top performers express a desire to leave your company, set up stay interviews. Ask if there is anything you can provide that might make them consider remaining. You can also schedule stay interviews for long-valued employees to learn what aspects of your workplace are keeping them there, as well as any changes they’d like to see implemented to head them off from ever wanting to walk out the door.

If they cannot be persuaded to stay, these stay interviews can evolve into exit interviews and thus opportunities to speak candidly about elements of your workplace that might be improved upon for your remaining employees and future hires.

Learn How to Act on Employee Feedback to Improve Hiring and Retention

Once you institute a variety of employee feedback collection methods, learn more about how to implement the latest hiring and management methods to optimize your retention and recruitment strategies.

The post Types of Employee Feedback Collection Methods appeared first on Monster.com.

As a business owner, it’s essential to know how to decrease the likelihood that your employees will bring their skills and insider knowledge to your competition. Here is everything you need to know about this controversial recruitment strategy and, most importantly, how to combat it.

What is Employee Poaching?

Businesses often target and hire people who work (or previously worked) for their competitors. This practice is commonly used for in-demand roles that require specific technical skills, advanced degrees, or a proven track record. For example, software engineers, lawyers, and executives are often targets.

Hiring managers can find their competitors’ current and former employees on professional social networking sites and by checking company websites. If they ask their employees and other people in their professional network for referrals, it’s likely some will work for the competition.

How to Mitigate the Risk of Losing Top Talent

You invest time, money, and resources into finding and training your employees. You don’t want your competitors to benefit from your hard work. These risk mitigation strategies can help you combat employee poaching.

1. Implement Restrictive Covenants

There are three restrictive contracts that can help prevent poaching or decrease its impact if your employees quit to work for one of your competitors or start their own competing business.

• Non-compete agreement: This restricts your employees from working for a competitor or starting a competing business for a set time after leaving your company. You must be able to prove a business need for the restriction and the duration and proximity must be fair, while it may not pose an “undue hardship” on the employee or create a disadvantage for the public. For example, a judge may find it unfair to restrict a former employee from working for any competitors located in the state for two years.
• Non-solicitation agreement: Depending on the agreement, you can restrict employees from “improperly soliciting” clients, customers, or other employees. However, employees, clients, and customers have the right to decide where to work or take their business. The biggest legal consideration may be whether the employee pressured the exodus, or it was voluntary. Courts also consider whether the client or customer list and associated contact info was confidential or could be identified using public sources.
• Non-disclosure agreement: This contract restricts your employee from sharing confidential information or trade secrets with your competitors.

Check your state laws, as restrictive covenants aren’t enforceable in some states and others set limitations on when and how they may be used. You may also want to have a lawyer review your contracts before you ask employees to sign on the dotted line.

2. Respond to Employee Feedback

If your employees enjoy their role and your company culture, they are less likely to be susceptible to employee poaching. Increase employee engagement by collecting and implementing employee feedback.

It’s valuable to send frequent anonymous employee engagement surveys to your team to find out how engaged your employees are and how their work experience could be better. You may want to cover topics such as compensation and benefits, work-life balance, company culture, collaboration, and professional development.

It can also be helpful to conduct regular stay interviews to find out why your employees are staying at the company and what would boost their job satisfaction. Stay interviews are more effective than exit interviews because you can improve your employees’ work experience so that they are less likely to be captivated by your competition.

If your team is too large to interview everyone, make sure to include people from a variety of departments and seniority levels. Prioritize top performers because you want to keep them on board, as well as people who seem disengaged (they’re likely to have constructive criticism).

3. Incentivize Employees to Stay

Employee poaching is most effective when your competitors can offer your employees higher salaries and titles. You may be able to convince top employees to stay by presenting a compelling counteroffer.

While the best way to retain employees is to offer competitive salaries and benefits, you may not be able to afford to pay at the top salary range. Fortunately, there are other ways you can incentivize employees to stay, including:

• Equity compensation: People may be willing to work for a lower salary if you give them ownership in the company by providing stock options or grants.
• Paid parental leave and fertility benefits: Attract and retain parents and young professionals by offering a competitive paid parental leave policy and an insurance policy that covers fertility treatments and adoption costs.
• Remote work and flextime policies: Increase work-life balance by allowing employees to work from home all or some of the time and letting them set hours that work for their family.

Continue to Improve Your HR Policies

These best practices for combatting employee poaching will help you retain the talent you need to run a successful business. Get the right people in the door and keep improving retention by implementing expert-recommended recruitment and management advice from Monster.

Legal Disclaimer:  This article is not intended as a substitute for professional legal advice. Always seek the advice of an attorney regarding any legal questions you may have.

The post Is Employee Poaching Legal? appeared first on Monster.com.

Remember that it’s also stressful for your employees, who may feel overworked and undervalued. The last thing you want is to lose top talent and become even more short-staffed. It’s essential to increase employee morale when you’re understaffed so your team members feel valued and are more productive, engaged, and collaborative. They are likely to be happier, work harder, and produce higher quality work.

Use this expert advice to successfully motivate your team during a shortage, which will also make your company more attractive to candidates and enable you to staff up more quickly.

Act on Employee Feedback

Improve employee morale by promptly responding to employee feedback. Encourage managers to have regular one-on-one meetings with their direct reports to give and receive feedback, set goals, celebrate accomplishments, and strengthen their working relationships.

Send quarterly, anonymous employee engagement surveys to find out how engaged your team members are and what you can do to improve their work experience. You may want to ask questions about compensation and benefits, company culture, work-life balance, teamwork, and the resources they need to be successful.

Conduct exit and stay interviews to better determine how to amplify your company culture and job satisfaction. Stay interviews give you the opportunity to find out why employees are staying at your company and what can be improved. Unlike exit interviews with departing employees, you can make changes to keep star employees before they’ve handed in their two weeks’ notice.

Implement Reskilling and Upskilling Initiatives

Provide resources that enable your team members to acquire the necessary skills to help your business weather a staffing shortage. Focus on both reskilling and upskilling.

Reskilling trainings teach employees how to do completely different roles and responsibilities, like switching from being an assistant to a marketing associate. Upskilling trainings help employees improve their current capabilities and learn the new skills they need to get promoted.

Make professional development part of your company culture by offering onsite trainings, leadership coaching, stipends for classes and conferences, clear career advancement plans, internal hiring programs, and mentorship initiatives. Candidates and employees want to work at a company that values career advancement, so it’s likely to help your recruitment and retention efforts.

Promote Work-Life Balance

Many of your employees are probably overworked and stressed which can lead to employee burnout, one of the main causes of increased turnover. When you’re faced with an employee shortage, consider instituting company policies that promote work-life balance, for example:

• Flextime: Your team members can set their own hours instead of working 9 am to 5 pm (or later). Parents can choose hours that work for school drop-off and pick-up.
• Remote work: Let employees telecommute all the time or a few days a week which can save time and money. (As an added benefit, some employees are more productive when they work from home.)
• Compressed work week: Give employees the option to work more than eight hours a day a few days a week; for example, they could work 10 hours a day, four days a week.

Improve Your Company Culture

One of the best ways to improve employee morale—and company performance—during a staffing shortage is to strengthen your company culture. Host team events like lunches, trivia nights, and field days. Encourage your team members to organize “extracurriculars” like book clubs, sports teams, and employee resource groups (ERGs).

You can also boost your company culture by hosting quarterly all-team meetings, developing shared goals and objectives, and creating core values. All-team meetings are also a perfect venue for celebrating individual and departmental accomplishments, while setting goals and objectives for the next quarter.

Increase Company Perks and Benefits

During a staffing shortage, your team members may feel like they aren’t appreciated for their extra time and effort. If you’re actively hiring, you might not have enough money to increase salaries or give out bonuses, but there are other ways you can show your appreciation.

Consider adding benefits such as mental health days, childcare stipends, paid parental leave, fertility benefits, and wellness stipends. You can also add perks like meeting-free days, surprise days off, and performance awards.

Hire Short-Term Workers

When you’re short-staffed, there’s more pressure to hire new employees quickly. There is less of a commitment when you hire short-term workers, however, allowing you to make hiring decisions faster – as long as it makes sense for your business and particular needs.

If you have a one-off project that your employees don’t have the time or skills to complete, like creating a sizzle reel or shooting product photography, consider hiring gig workers. If you need longer-term help and want to work with someone on a trial basis before deciding to make a permanent offer, a temporary worker would be a better fit. You can save money by paying a project fee or hourly rate instead of an annual salary.

Continue to Build a Strong Team

These best practices are likely to help you weather a staffing shortage more successfully than your competitors, who may be losing customers and employees. Learn more ways to strengthen your team and stay ahead of your competition by implementing expert HR advice from Monster.

The post How to Manage a Staffing Shortage appeared first on Monster.com.

An effective job title:

1. Attracts the right candidates
2. Clarifies the job responsibilities
3. Matches the seniority level
4. Aligns with the expectations
5. Fits the organizational chart

It’s important to be strategic about the title you select for each position because it can help you recruit and retain top talent. Here are some best practices for creating titles that work for your company.

Attracts the Right Candidates

When you post a job description online, the title you choose could be the difference between collecting dozens of resumes or a handful. Use the most common title so your job description is more likely to appear when people use search engines and job board search features to look for similar jobs.

There’s been a trend in using creative titles like “marketing ninja,” “social media guru,” “recruiting rockstar,” or “buzz builder.” However, it’s unlikely people will be using those search terms so it’s advantageous to use popular company job titles for your industry like “marketing manager,” “social media manager,” “recruiter,” and “public relations associate.”

If you’re unsure of the most common job title, check out how companies in your industry are recruiting for similar positions. Maximize reach by using synonymous titles throughout the job description. If you’re hiring an executive assistant, for example, you might want to also use the terms “personal assistant,” and “administrative assistant.” (If having creative job titles fits your company culture, you could use them internally but have the more standard titles on job postings and business cards.)

Clarifies the Job Responsibilities

A potential candidate has limited information when they are scrolling through job postings to decide whether they want to apply for the role. Use descriptive company job titles so candidates have a clear idea of the general job responsibilities before they click to read the full job description.

Instead of using a vague job title like “associate,” you should include a qualifier like “customer service associate,” “litigation associate,”or “investor relations associate.” Include any specifics that will help someone determine if they want to hit “apply.” For example, instead of saying that you’re hiring a “reporter,” you could specify that you’re looking for a “real estate reporter” or a “politics reporter.”

Matches the Seniority Level

You can add descriptors to your job titles to show the seniority level. Indicate the seniority level by using terms like assistant, associate, supervisor, manager, junior, senior, director, vice president, head, and president.

One of the easiest ways to boost employee morale and retention at a company is to offer career advancement opportunities so ambitious employees don’t think they’ve hit a standstill. The titles you choose will help you show the career trajectory for each role and, if you have a career development plan in place for each employee, it will be clear what they need to accomplish to be promoted to the next level.

Aligns With Expectations

It can be tempting to use elevated company job titles like “chief of staff” when you’re hiring an executive assistant or “client services specialist” when you’re looking for a receptionist. However, keep in mind that a candidate who is applying to a chief of staff or client services specialist position will expect a higher salary. You might go through the entire hiring process just to have candidates reject your offer because they were expecting a six-figure salary.

Let’s say the candidate accepted your offer at the lower salary because they were impressed by the prestigious title-knowing their friends, family, and people they schmooze with at networking events would be impressed. If they thought they’d be in executive-level meetings and are managing an executive’s calendar and picking up their lunch and latte orders, they are unlikely to stick around long.

Fits the Organizational Chart

When you are hiring, it’s important to choose a title that denotes where the person will fall on your organizational chart. It wouldn’t make sense to use the title “director of marketing” on the job posting if the director of marketing is their boss’ boss.

If you don’t have a director of marketing, you may want to give your first marketing hire that elevated title. However, if you subsequently hire someone with much more experience, they might be upset that they are at the same level as someone who is just starting out. Likewise, if you change your original director of marketing’s title to a lower level, they might view it as a demotion and start using Monster to look for jobs.

Put Your Company Job Titles to Use with a Free Job Posting

Now that you know best practices for setting job titles that will help you with recruitment and retention, you’re ready to start hiring. With Monster’s global reach, advanced search filters, and open resume database, you’ll be able to quickly find someone with the skills and experience to be successful. Get started with a free job posting.

The post How Company Job Titles Can Improve Recruitment and Retention appeared first on Monster.com.

Competition for top talent seems to get tougher each year. That means you’ll need to put more effort into keeping your best employees by using retention tactics like stay interviews and pay increases. Here are some tips for retaining good employees, including how to ask an employee to stay when they’ve got one foot out the door.

1. Create a Better Work Environment

If a top performer has put in their two weeks’ notice and you’re worried about others walking away, it’s time to learn how to ask an employee to stay and how to retain your current employees. For example, you could:

• Ask the employee what it will take to retain them, and see if you can accommodate some or all of their requests.
• Match or exceed their offer, if you can afford it, or offer them an elevated title.
• Think outside the box – career development opportunities are high on the wish list of many employees these days, particularly millennials. Commit to a dollar amount so they can attend courses or work with a career coach.
• See if they would be interested in a career mentorship program. Offer to make an introduction to someone who can help grow their career.

When it comes to enticing an employee to stay, you probably have more options than you realize.

2. Address Management Issues

By now you probably have a good idea why your high-performing employees are taking their knowledge and skills elsewhere. Now is the time to take action and correct problem areas that are preventing good employees from staying.

For example, it’s no secret that many people leave companies because of their boss or manager. Is one supervisor in your business having significantly more voluntary turnover than the rest? Is this the same supervisor that you’ve been thinking of replacing? Do what needs to be done – remove them.

Then reach out to those high performers who have left or could leave due to their managers. Let them know there is a new management team in place, and ask them to stay or come back, as the case may be. Don’t be surprised if some say yes.

Continue to monitor the environment so that you can correct problems before they become big issues. This will help you retain employees you’ve worked so hard to secure.

1. Remain in Touch With Former Employees

Not all hope is lost, even if your cherished worker has already walked away. How often have you made a decision that you regretted? For most of us, the answer is frequently. We all have regrets, including employees.

One of the best ways to win back good employees is to make it a point to stay in touch, for example, through the occasional email or social media. Let the former employee know you were thinking about them and wanted to reach out to see how they’re doing.

Consider including an article or a notice about an event that might be of interest to them. Take it a step further by picking up the phone and asking how their new job is going. In either case, remind such high-performing employees that they are welcome back anytime.

5. Retain Top Talent by Hiring the Best Candidates

While most employers could benefit from learning how to ask an employee to stay, it’s not always going to work. And unfortunately, the cost of turnover can be high. The good news is that there are steps you can take to avoid these situations, from upgrading your recruitment strategy to find the right employees, to utilizing expert retention tools so you can keep the ones you need. With our unique connection to the business world and our global reach, Monster has insights to share. Find out how you can get free business resources for your company today.

The post Retaining Top Talent: How to Ask an Employee to Stay appeared first on Monster.com.

Millennials and Gen Z have much in common—they’ve come of age and entered the workforce during turbulent times, they’ve witnessed mass layoffs and understand what they mean for individuals and families, and many of them are on the hunt for work that will have a meaningful impact on the world around them. Employers, whether they’re hiring millennials or hiring Gen Z candidates, need to keep these shared qualities in mind as they look to attract applicants.

But there are also key differences between these two generations. Figuring out what those differences are can help you develop a recruitment strategy that will appeal to the two most educated and diverse generations to enter the workforce so far.

Who Are They? Hiring Millennials vs. Gen Z

Born between 1980 and 1995, Millennials are approaching the midpoint of their careers and likely already make up the bulk of your workforce. Gen Zs, born between 1996 and 2010, are a much smaller cohort, beginning the first segment of their careers—looking for entry-level jobs, finishing up their post-secondary education, or earning a first promotion.

Much has been made of both generations’ reputation for job hopping, but this tendency can be seen as an opportunity for employers who are willing to learn what motivates younger workers to apply for new roles and how to lure top performers away from your competition. Understanding the subtle differences between these generations across the following criteria can help you craft an effective recruiting process for hiring millennials and Gen Z.

Technology and Innovation

Social media recruitment has become increasingly important when it comes to hiring Gen Z and millennials since both generations spend much of their time there, though not necessarily on the same platforms. Millennials are more likely to use professional development and networking sites to look for work opportunities, whereas Gen Z are less likely to differentiate their social media time between personal and professional, and they spend more time on video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok than millennials.

To appeal to Gen Z during the hiring process, consider sending personalized correspondence with an attached short signature or greeting video. Both generations are likely to reach out via social media, so be prepared to respond to seeker inquiries from those sources.

Application Processes

Gen Z candidates are even more mobile tech focused than millennials. They don’t remember a time before smartphones and have very little patience for long, involved online application forms that can’t be completed on mobile devices. Millennials are more likely to be adept with both new tech and relatively older communication modalities such as emails and voicemail, and to have a bit more patience with lengthier hiring processes, especially for upper-level positions.

Hiring millennials and Gen Z requires employers to be mindful of the candidate experience, as potential hires from both generations are gauging your process to determine whether they want to work for you. They have little patience for the crucible-like hiring processes that were the norm for baby boomers and Gen X.

Compensation

Higher salary is the No. 1 motivating factor for younger workers to switch, especially for Gen Z. For millennials, salary is important, but they are more focused on equity and fairness in compensation. They want to be paid what they’re worth and are adept at researching what that is. Use salary tool that includes geographic area and job title to ensure your salary rangers are in line, or even slightly above the competition.

Both generations expect transparency when it comes to compensation. If you are caught lying about compensation policy or awarding wildly variant wages and benefits to workers with similar roles and tenure, this is likely to prompt them to look elsewhere.

Engagement

Like Millennials, Gen Z applicants are likely to envision a career path that includes multiple employers along the way. In addition, because they entered the workforce just as a global pandemic resulted in layoffs that disproportionally affected younger workers, derailing the early career trajectories of many, they are generally more career-focused than millennials.

If you make it clear that you’re ready to mentor entry-level employees and give them growth opportunities to help them make up for lost time, you can appeal to Gen Z. Hiring millennials may require a slightly different approach, as this generation has historically been more focused on seeking out mission-driven career opportunities. Making your values as a company clear to potential hires will be key.

Work-life Balance

Gen Z prefers working in an office space—for now. This is likely because they are at a time of life where the community an office space provides is desirable. Millennials tend to seek out flexibility, as well as remote or hybrid work policies—understandably, as many are right in the thick of raising families and caring for other family members.

Teamwork

Millennials thrive in teams, though these days they tend to do so remotely via tools like Slack, Trello, or Microsoft Teams. Gen Z has a reported preference for working individually and many express a desire to go back to the era of private offices rather than shared workspaces with open floor plans. Knowing which approach to work appeals more to each generation can help you tailor your recruitment process accordingly.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Gen Z is the most diverse generation to ever enter the workforce. They expect their employers to be committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and are unlikely to be tempted to work for an employer that has a reputation for anything less. Developing an employer brand with a proven commitment to making real gains on DEI issues will pay off over the course of this generation’s tenure in the workforce.

As millennials begin to enter the ranks of management, they are focused on equity are likely to be attracted to a company that has cultivated an employer brand that includes a focus on DEI at all levels.

Learn the Best Ways to Connect to Every Generation

Whether you’re looking at hiring millennials or hiring Gen Z applicants, accessing the latest recruitment news and expert how-tos can help you get there.

The post Hiring Millennials vs. Hiring Gen Z: What’s the Difference? appeared first on Monster.com.

The Four Components of Compensation

Compensation is often conflated with salary, but there’s more to employee earnings than wages. A successful employee recruitment and retention policy includes the following forms of remuneration:

• Direct guaranteed: This category includes payroll allocations such as salary or hourly wages, as well as shift differentials and other negotiated expenses and allowances that the employer is obligated to provide to employees and cannot legally curtail without prior notice.
• Direct variable: These monetary rewards are tied to how well either the individual or the company performs and include sales incentives and annual bonuses.
• Indirect: Indirect compensation includes employee benefits and perks, ranging from health insurance to free meals, expense accounts, or use of a company car.
• Equity: These include stock options or other ownership stakes.

Why Do You Need a Compensation Strategy?

If you’re running a small business or startup, it may be tempting to assume you can simply tailor salary offers and raises to the qualifications and performance of each employee. But without a strategy to guide compensation, it can be difficult to scale your business to meet the demands presented by periods of rapid growth.

A well-developed compensation strategy can improve the effectiveness of the following HR and management functions:

• Talent acquisition: The less you share about your compensation policy during the hiring process the more likely it can seem that you have something to hide. Some states now require employers to share salary ranges in job descriptions, which benefits job seekers and hiring managers, since it promotes pay equity and allows candidates who are seeking a higher starting salary to take themselves out of the running early on.
• Retention: Fair, easily understood remuneration, aligned with your company and your employees’ values, can augment employee engagement, increase employee tenure, and boost your employer brand. It can also increase the possibility that your employees will talk up your company as a great place to work to their friends and former colleagues.
• Budgeting: Knowing how much to budget for payroll and benefits from year to year, can help you create effective recruitment and retention plans.

Compensation Best Practices

The best way to attract and retain top talent is to make sure that you offer a competitive compensation package that is appropriate to your industry and geographic area, and to each employee’s position, expertise, and value.

There are a variety of ways to determine your wages and benefits. Regardless of which you choose, to be effective they should embody the following core attributes:

• Simplicity: Your employee incentive plan should be easily understood by all your employees. An overly complicated strategy is likely to be perceived as overly technical, or even as a cover for an arbitrary system.
• Clarity: Make the details of your system easily available to employees across a variety of platforms and make it clear that questions about compensation are welcome.
• Transparency: Millennial and Gen Z workers are more likely than previous generations to share salary information, and more likely to take offense when they learn of significant discrepancies. If they believe your compensation strategy is unfair or arbitrary it could prompt them to start dusting off their resumes.
• Consistency: Once you’ve established your policy, resist tweaking it too frequently, especially in ways that might reward newer employees in ways that seem unfair to valued long-time employees who may be closing in on significant milestones.

Legal Considerations

Laws affecting wages and benefits are changing fast. As you craft a strategy, check federal, state, and local mandates and consider conferring with an attorney to answer any questions you may have, such as:

• Do I need to list salary ranges in job postings?
• Am I prohibited from asking candidates what they made at their last position?
• Can I prohibit employees from discussing their salaries?

Aligning Compensation With Values

Establishing or revising an organizational compensation strategy requires fact-gathering and reflection to determine whether the benefits, wages, and rewards you provide to your employees align with your:

• Company culture and employer brand: You can’t claim to be passionate about equity in your mission statement and branding if your pay structure proves otherwise, for example.
• Organizational strategy: Compensation is an integral part of your company strategy. Make sure any changes you make are in service of recruiting and retaining the talent you need for your business to be successful.
• Industry norms: Conduct stay and exit interviews and ask about counter-offers to determine what your competitors are offering. You can also use a salary tool to determine median incomes according to job title and location.

Types of Compensation Strategies

Now that you’ve done the preliminary work of considering your company values and researching your sector, it’s time to select the strategy that aligns best with your brand and long-term goals.

Ranked Compensation

In this strategy, employers award raises based on ranked appraisals that require managers to identify top performers, adequate performers, and struggling employees. A small percentage of top performers earn significant raises, those in the middle earn modest rewards, and poor performers receive no raise or are even counseled to leave the organization.

This is an outdated model that today’s workers are not likely to tolerate for long, nor does it encourage workplace values that data shows improve performance, such as teamwork, trust in management, or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Younger workers are especially unlikely to remain in an environment that deemphasizes collaboration and encourages this level of intense competition among coworkers.

Formulaic vs. Discretionary

The era of the discretionary—or subjective—compensation strategy may be at an end. Because millennial and especially Gen Z workers are far more likely than older cohorts to compare salaries, and they are more likely to complain or quit if they learn they are making less than their coworkers for the same job. It’s beneficial to use a formula that takes position, location, and tenure into consideration.

Leading, Meeting, or Lagging

Once you’ve researched salary and benefits trends in your industry, you can use this knowledge to decide whether you want to undercut, match, or lead your sector in compensation.

Matching or leading will tend to help you attract and keep top talent. If you decide to offer lagging compensation packages, you can try to make up for it with cost-effective perks, but you may also want to attract talent through other means, such as offering a remote or hybrid schedule or unlimited paid time off (PTO).

If you opt for a matching or lagging strategy you can strengthen employee engagement by providing smaller but more frequent raises and tying them to the market performance that you share frequently and in detail across the organization.

Paying for the Person, Position, or Performance

Sometimes referred to as the 3Ps, this strategy requires managers to consider their needs and set their compensation priorities accordingly.

• Paying for the Person: This is most likely to occur at the C-suite level, where an individual with a well-known reputation can signal a change in direction or investment in excellence.
• Paying for the Position: You might need to reward employees based on position in industries where workers with certain expertise are at a premium. For example, a healthcare organization in desperate need of nurses may need to offer a comparatively high salary for anyone who meets your minimum job requirements to maintain safe staffing levels.
• Pay for performance: This structure is more likely to be used to reward and incentivize top performers who are already on your payroll. Performance-focused compensation tends to lean more heavily on incentives and bonuses, which can be based on productivity, sales, innovation, or the completion of a large project. On an organizational level, this might mean tying raises to company performance.

Learn How to Make Your Newly Developed Compensation Strategy Pay Off

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Along with all the highly valuable traits millennial workers possess, they have also gained a reputation for job hopping. This is a bit unfair. After all, younger workers have always been more likely to switch jobs and even transition to new specialties and careers, than older workers.

That said, there are ways to increase your chances of holding on to your top-performing team members. The strategies can help your retention rates for these valuable employees.

1. Throw Out Your Old Management Playbook

Many employers are relying on the same HR tactics that have worked in the past. When strategies that have helped extend the tenures of workers from previous generations don’t work with millennials, employers tend to conclude that younger workers lack loyalty. This is not necessarily a fair assessment ⁠— and it certainly won’t help you retain younger workers longer.

Remember, millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, which means they likely had parents or neighbors who lost work during the Great Recession. They know that few companies offer long-term incentives like pensions any longer, that they can roll over their 401(k) accounts to an IRA or a new 401(k) fund when they transition to their next position, and they are understandably dubious of old axioms like “your loyalty will be rewarded in the long run.”

Millennials have a very different view of the workplace from the last large cohort, the baby boomers, as well as Gen X, the smaller cohort that followed on their heels. If you want to keep them engaged in their roles and contributing to your organization for longer, you need to understand what opportunities and incentives will resonate with them. You need to employ millennial retention strategies that have been proven to improve and extend tenure.

2. Let Them Know You Care

Instead of offering far-off incentives to encourage younger workers to stay on board longer, focus on developing millennial retention strategies designed to inspire and strengthen their engagement in their role, team, and your organization right now. The best way to do this is to focus on their future.

Millennials will work harder ⁠— and remain with your organization longer ⁠— if you convince them that you are invested in their success and their professional development beyond their current role.

Show Them You Care About Their Professional Growth

Millennials feel most valued when their employers are:

• Actively investing in upskilling.
• Providing educational and professional development opportunities, both onsite, online, and outside of the organization.
• Offering benefits such as tuition reimbursement, student loan assistance, memberships in professional associations, and industry event attendance fees.

Show Them You Care About Their Well-being

Many millennials appreciate employers that demonstrate that they care about their physical and mental well-being, which can be accomplished by:

• Offering robust healthcare benefits, including mental health coverage and an employee assistance program (EAP).
• Providing onsite seminars and resources designed to reduce stress through strategies like yoga, meditation, and well-stocked break rooms.
• Encouraging workers to use their PTO, including personal or mental health days to prevent burnout.

Show Them You Care About Community

According to data from multiple surveys, most millennials want to work for organizations that are not solely focused on short-term profit. That doesn’t mean you need to be running a non-governmental organization (NGO) to attract and retain them. But it does mean that profit-driven organizations should consider offering its employees ways to engage in community, social justice, or sustainability initiatives.

One of the most effective millennial retention strategies involves shifting your internal policies to reflect today’s job seeker (and consumer) marketplace. Demonstrate to millennial (and Gen Z) candidates and employees that you are serious about improving social justice issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), disability accommodation, and accessibility within your organization, and not only will you stay on board longer, but they will also become brand ambassadors, singing your praises to other employees and potential customers and candidates

3. Let Them Know You Trust Them

Because autonomy is very important to most millennial workers, some of the most effective millennial retention strategies focus on providing employees with flexible options. Though they tend to flourish in a team-based organizational structure, they also like to be able to have a certain amount of freedom when it comes to determining their schedules and process. This allows them to leverage their strengths, including creativity, inventiveness, and problem-solving.

Offer them options such as , unlimited or undifferentiated PTO policies, and the ability to collaborate on their year-end or quarterly performance goals.

4. Leverage Their Sense of Fair Play

More than any generation before them, millennials believe that compensation models should be transparent and based on performance rather than seniority. They also believe that compensation, including bonuses, should be based on how well they work rather than how many hours they work. After all, we’ve all known the worker (or manager!) who can spend a lot of time accomplishing very little.

Effective millennial retention strategies align compensation and benefits policies equitably, especially across all categories of gender and cultural difference. Millennials are more likely to talk about salary with their peers than past generations. They are also more adept at and have more tools available to research compensation rates for their role and region. As a result, attempting to keep secret a wildly variable compensation structure is likely to backfire.

One way to make sure you are offering a fair wage is to use a salary tool that accounts for job title and geographic region to determine compensation rates for each role across your organization.

Millennials also expect a clear and transparent pathway to a promotion and higher compensation levels, so make sure your policies are clearly stated and readily available, and have managers go over them during performance reviews.

5. Offer Millennials Benefits That Appeal to Them

This does not mean adding ping pong and foosball tables to the break room. But it might mean offering remote or hybrid scheduling options or improving your workforce wellness efforts. It might mean getting creative with your incentive structure by, for example, assigning longer-term projects with a bonus tied to successful completion, and then making sure you have another one lined up when that one ends.

If you can employ millennial retention strategies that keep these highly valuable workers engaged and committed to your organization’s foundational values and mission, you stand a good chance of improving retention and benefitting from the efforts of your top-performing millennial team members for years to come.

Learn More About the Latest Employee Retention Tools and Strategies

Now that you’ve learned about some of the most effective millennial retention strategies, find out more about the latest management best practices, recruitment and hiring news, and ways to boost employee morale.

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I was recently brought into a firm to help them determine why so many Millennial workers were leaving their organization as quickly as they seemed to be arriving. Frankly, it’s not an uncommon problem.

Their concern about retaining employees was valid, as employee turnover was having an impact on the company’s ability to grow their business. I asked the CEO why he thought Millennials were leaving well before they hit their two-year anniversary mark. He replied with, “Because they are Millennials.”

Millennials sometimes get a bad rap these days, as employers seek to find answers on how to retain employees. Sure, it’s easy to blame an entire generation for what feels like a surge in employee turnover. But that is a mistake.

My conclusion: age had nothing to do with why employee retention rates were dropping. There was much more going on.

Here are some of the reasons why Millennials could be leaving your company–and some suggestions to help you retain them.

Suffering from a Lack of Purpose
Millennial workers are seeking more than a paycheck from their employers. They want a purpose. Business needs to reset its purpose to attract Millennials, according to the annual Deloitte Millennial Survey. Currently, Millennials believe (75 percent) of businesses are focused on their own agendas rather than helping to improve society.

Employers seeking to retain Millennial workers are advised to take a closer look at the organizational purpose.

Assess how you communicate the heart and soul of company mission and its impact on society and employees. This one small change can make a dramatic difference in employee retention numbers — and it doesn’t cost a dime to do so.

Employees Don’t Feel Valued
Remember when you began your career and you had all sorts of hopes and dreams for yourself? And then, for most of us, the reality of this thing we call work happened.

If this was your experience during the recession you had no choice but to put on a happy face and show up for work everyday. Millennial workers, on the other hand, are at the beginning stages of their career. Their hopes and dreams are still fresh. Only they don’t have to stay at your company – the recession is over.

If their hopes and dreams of being treated like they matter don’t materialize, there are 5.4 billion job openings that Millennials can choose from, according to a recent JOLTS report.

It’s not uncommon to forget to show people who work for you that they are highly valued. Sometimes a shout out will do; other times an offer of lunch with the boss or an invite to attend an off-site training will help demonstrate that you are indeed happy to have this person on your team.

As I’ve said before, Millennials regularly need motivation: nurture, praise, repeat.

They Don’t Feel Adequately Compensated
Many employers are still operating under the assumption that compensation doesn’t matter. It does matter, especially when you are a young professional with student debt who is living in a metropolitan city. If you don’t pay a Millennial what he or she thinks they are worth, someone else will.

If it’s been several years since you last looked at your salary structures then this would be the time to do so. The labor market has changed dramatically over the past twenty-four months. Do this now, before another Millennial walks out the door for a better paying job.

They Require Work-life Balance
Have you noticed the increase in the number of companies offering great perks at work? These range from free lunches, company paid taxi rides home for those who work past 7:00 PM  – or even prepared dinners to go. They are enough to make an employee think twice about ever leaving the office!

Here’s the thing. Millennial workers (and all workers for that matter) value work-life balance. They want the flexibility to leave work on time so they can have a life outside of work.

Yet their reality is quite different. According to a new survey from Deloitte, 33% of those surveyed don’t feel comfortable taking vacation or personal days, while fewer than half say their organizations place value on life outside of work.

This disconnect is causing discontent throughout workplaces. The solution to increasing contentment is simple. Nearly half as many of those surveyed said they would feel more comfortable taking personal time if they saw their managers doing the same.

Policies that are geared toward work-life balance are great. However, they are only effective if those in supervisory positions make it truly okay for their direct reports to use this time as it was intended.

Remind those in charge that work-life balance is part of the fabric of your organization. Reducing this important benefit serves neither the employee or employer.

Refine your hiring

Attracting and retaining Millennial workers requires company-wide effort. This investment is well worth the effort. After all, these are the employees that will enable you to grow your business. Could you use some more insights to help you refine your hiring strategy? Sign up for exclusive Monster Hiring advice and we’ll send you the latest recruiting tips, hiring trends, management strategies, and even some awesome Monster deals. We’ve got the time-tested expertise, plus cutting-edge technology, to help you attract top candidates of all ages and experience levels.

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The good news is that you can protect your company from the loss of knowledge and experience facing your workplace. Here are some tools to keep you ahead of the curve.

Retain Baby Boomers

Keep baby boomers as long as you can. Even 12 to 18 additional months can give you time to transfer their knowledge to younger employees. Create a strategy for training younger employees to minimize knowledge gaps. Kip Michael Kelly, director of marketing and public programs at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School recommends considering:

• How many people are close to retiring?
• What management roles do they fill?
• What skills and abilities will you have to replace when they leave?
• What industry and client relationships will your company lose?
• What institutional knowledge do your boomers have?

Keep Your Boomers Engaged

Many companies are engaging baby boomers in the workplace. A study from LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute found that 92 percent of employers were taking steps to help their employees work longer, says Deborah Dupont, LIMRA’s associate managing director of retirement plans research.

Flexibility is a key component of their employee engagement strategies. Some two-thirds of the surveyed firms implemented flexible work hours. For example, federal government agencies have been offering a phased retirement option to employees who wish to work part time. They draw a part-time salary, take partial retirement benefits, and must spend 20 percent of their work time mentoring coworkers.

About 42 percent of the organizations surveyed by LIMRA had flexible workplaces, allowing employees to work remotely. CVS, for example, hires snowbird employees who choose work in the company’s Florida stores in the winter months and in northern stores during the summer.

Make the Workplace Senior-Friendly

Another way to keep baby boomers in the workplace is to resolve the issues that commonly lead these workers to retire — even when they want to continue working. Here’s a few to consider:

• Health problems. Can you make your workplace more accommodating?
• Care for a family member or spouse. Do you offer eldercare services including emergency elder care? Flextime or part-time work options?
• Lack of transferable skills. Does your organization offer employee training?

These workplace adaptations can lead to process improvements. When BMW designed an assembly line based on input from older workers, the line showed a seven percent productivity increase in a single year. Follow BMW’s lead by setting up a forum where your oldest workers can share ideas for workplace improvements.

Consider Partnership Opportunities

Over the course of their careers, baby boomers have been shown to be very entrepreneurial, according to the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation.

“Older entrepreneurs don’t usually start companies out of retirement or unemployment – they are more likely to do so from a job,” the report finds. “So rising labor force participation among boomers, combined with their existing propensity to start companies, could mean a boost to rates of business creation in the future.”

To capitalize on this trend, you could discuss post-retirement entrepreneurship in your pre-retirement talks with employees and during exit interviews. Are there opportunities to keep retiring baby boomers in the workplace via a partnership or joint operating agreement?

Use Mentoring Programs to Transfer Knowledge

One of the best methods to capture your boomers’ knowledge and experience is with a mentor program, says Courtney Templin, president, JB Training Solutions, Chicago and author of Manager 3.0: A Millennial’s Guide to Rewriting the Rules of Management. “Millennials are eager to learn and they love mentors and coaches,” she says.

“Part-time consulting and coaching can be another option for transferring knowledge,” adds Templin. “Be sure you make clear guidelines and structure for the program so the new leaders can wholeheartedly step into the role.”

Other ways to share knowledge include setting up multi-generational work teams and asking employees to share their thoughts about company culture, policies, procedures, and software.

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Retirement will eventually come for those baby boomers in the workplace. However, having the right tools and strategy in place can help you weather the generational change. Get expert recruitment and management advice from Monster.

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