Recruiters and talent acquisition managers are calling this hyper competitive candidate market the War for Talent 2.0, The Great Rehire and other fun slogans that amuse as much as they frustrate.
The future-focused employers are looking inward to internal talent mobility in a strategic attempt to hold onto high performers and minimize the need for costly and often damaging stand downs.
LinkedIn reports that since the outbreak of the pandemic, internal mobility has increased by nearly 20%. Additionally, their data shows that employees stay 41 percent longer at companies that hire internally compared to those that don't. But to support your new talent management initiatives and give them the best chance of success, you may also need to ramp up your internal employer branded communication. We are talking about a change process, after all.
Why communication matters
If your organisation’s default hiring mindset has always been to “look external” and stick a job ad up on a job board, then you may need to introduce a slick communication and marketing campaign to educate and engage your employees.
Potentially that’s:
a change communication campaign for managers, and
employer branded content to engage employees and remind them why you’re a great place to work.
Employees need talent brand content, too
How do you rate your career communication and support for current employees?
Most employer branded content is created for external job seekers to connect them with your culture, explain your recruitment and hiring processes, and share interesting employee profiles and Day In The Life Of (DITLO) stories in the attraction and recruitment phases.
But then once candidates are onboarded, that delicious workplace content dries up and the connection can be lost for the remainder of the employee journey.
If an internal mobility program is on your agenda this year (even if it’s not), you might want to consider generating and sharing employer branded content with existing employees to strengthen their engagement with your brand and excite them about future opportunities.
Empowering progress
SEEK research revealed 74% of candidates say making progress in their career is important. However, ‘progress’ means something different to everyone and doesn’t always mean ‘up’. It could also mean advancing knowledge and skills, personal growth, greater work-life balance, or salary.
To better support and empower your employees throughout their journey with you, you could create snackable, authoritative content that plants seeds of further interest, maps out a course for action, or provides expert tips for navigating career-related events.
Because a lot can happen in your employee’s life while they’re with you, presenting an opportunity for you to step up as a trusted guide for events such as, overcoming workplace challenges, acing interviews, initiating career and/or salary conversations with managers, approaching and returning from parental leave, and transitioning into new roles and teams.
Consider an internal career content hub
Some organisations may already provide this content by way of an online learning system or as web pages on the intranet site. So then, how are your employees engaging with that content?
Are you promoting it, or do you dump it in a dark corner of your intranet site to be stumbled upon by the bored or overly adventurous? It’s great if you already have this information, but if your people don’t know it exists, can’t easily access it, or find it so dull they can’t connect with it, then it may benefit from an overhaul.
If you don’t have this stuff readily available, you could consider:
Creating a career content hub (web page / blog) that shares engaging thought leadership articles written by (or by interviewing) leaders and employees who are subject matter experts; project reviews that discuss shared learnings; and employee spotlights; stories, awards, and career pathways. Maybe start with a campaign to showcase the side steps as much as the traditional ladder progression or to highlight in-demand skills as they relate to your hard-to-fill roles.
Inviting employees to sign up to drip emails relating to their areas of interest (recruitment, career progression, DITLOs, life matters, like health and wellbeing and goal setting etc)
Creating a career content channel in slack or yammer to share links to your quick guides, open conversations, and invite feedback (surveys). You could also drop links to short, sharp, and engaging Q&A videos to share more employee stories.
You want to be creating content that celebrates, educates, and inspires your people about the work they’re already doing, and introduces them to opportunities they never considered before.
Infotainment content helps boost your employer brand and encourage employees to stay
Strategic talent mobility is a powerful recruitment and retention tool that becomes your competitive advantage in the War 2.0. But you’ll want to support your internal talent initiatives with quality employer branded content that creates engaged brand advocates.
Give people a reason to want to stay.
It will help establish your brand as an employer invested in your employees, and in return, they’ll invest in you.