A private, oceanfront office, full-time PA and 25-hour work week would be one way to attract top talent, but if that is impossible, you may want to consider these two practices.  After all, getting the top candidates to want to work for your organisation is about more than just the salary offered, particularly when it comes to the technology industry.  Technical consultants and developers are in high demand, and as such, are able to secure positions that provide benefits beyond that of the fiscal variety.

What are the two practices that can help?  Onboarding & Flexible Working.

Flexible Working 

In many countries businesses are required to provide flexible working options. But creating an environment in which employees feel able to ask for such arrangements, particularly when they are new and may feel they have something to prove, is another story. If you offer a flexible working arrangement from the outset, you will be more likely to attract (and retain) the candidates you want. Plus, research has shown that businesses that genuinely offer flexible working are more successful and have higher rates of employee satisfaction and retention.

What kind of flexible working can be requested?

• Working from home: It might be possible to do some or all of the work from home or anywhere else other than the normal place of work.

• Part time: Working less than full-time hours (usually by working fewer days).

• Compressed hours: Working full-time hours but over fewer days.

• Flexitime: The employee chooses when to start and end work (within agreed limits) but works certain ‘core hours’, i.e. 10am to 4pm every day.

• Annualised hours: The employee has to work a certain number of hours over the year but they have some flexibility about when they work. There are sometimes ‘core hours’ which the employee regularly works each week, and they work the rest of their hours flexibly or when there’s extra demand at work.

• Staggered hours: The employee has different start, finish and break times from other workers.

• Job sharing: Two people do one job and split the hours.

• Phased retirement: Default retirement age has been phased out and older workers can choose when they want to retire. This means they can reduce their hours and work part time.

Given the increasing trend (and legal requirements in some countries) towards offering flexible working, you might as well use it to your advantage to attract the best technical minds. 

Onboarding

Research has shown that a successful employee onboarding program helps to improve retention, engagement, satisfaction, and productivity of your new employees.

According to the Society For Human Resources Management (SHRM):

• 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.

• Organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new-hire productivity.

• 54% of companies with onboarding programs reported higher employee engagement.

What makes up a successful onboarding plan? Here are a few elements you may want to include:

• Reach out before their start date
• Make their first day memorable
• Keep their schedule tightly structured (to start)
• Form a cross-departmental onboarding team
• Spread out the paperwork
• Set expectations early (and regularly)
• Allow them to give feedback
• Communicate the culture clearly and often

The war for talent is raging.  Technology candidates from a Drupal programmer to a Microsoft BI specialist are made offers constantly — even when they aren’t looking for a job.  Offering something that makes a genuine impact to their work-life balance, and that helps them integrate into the company easily, may just make the difference between a great hire and an opportunity lost.

About Oliver Parks

Oliver Parks Consulting offers search-based recruitment solutions to the technology sector, specialising in the ERP, CRM, CMS, ECM, BI and Open Source Technology spaces. The firm’s multilingual consultants operate in narrowly-defined niche market segments, enabling them to gain extensive knowledge of the people and companies operating in each technology.  Oliver Parks has a proven track-record with more than 100,000 candidates worldwide and more than 300 clients globally.