Building a great team and then retaining is one of the biggest challenges that a manager faces in a workplace. If you are a technical manager in a software house, you would definitely look for the best developers, graphic designers, QA engineers, and content creators. At the end of the day, a team is only as good as its individual members. A one-man team can only work for a certain period of time, for long-term success – it is crucial to have an all-star team.
While the cutthroat competition in the digital world is intimidating, if you do have an effective team – you can definitely beat all your competitors and create products that are nothing shy of excellence. There are two steps to making a dream team – to recruit right and retain right. If you manage to recruit experienced and expert developers but cannot retain them, you will get little to no benefit of doing efficient hiring.
According to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, “82% of the companies are of the idea that they did not recruit highly talented people while 93% of the companies believe they cannot retain their executives”.
This figure goes on to shed light on the importance of hiring and keeping a good team. To help you in a creating an effective system to hire the best people and then retain them, here are 5 tips to do so. Let’s take a look:
Standard hiring process
Having a standard hiring process is important if you want to hire efficient team players. When the recruitment team is working on the hiring process, sit with them and create a scoreboard for every job role. Write down the skills, competencies, experience and education you would want your ideal candidate to have. Create a list of questions that will be asked from them and a few iterations of the tests that will be taken. For instance, if you are hiring a Java developer – list down the most critical questions, create a brief but smart test to see his/her skills to select the best person.
When the hiring process is well-defined for every role of the team, it will become easier for you to see if the candidate is according to the job role’s requirements or not.
Create a standby list
When you conduct lengthy tests and thorough interviews, you might find two to three candidates that fit the job role you are looking for. While you select one person among them, keep a priority list of all the people that you liked during the hiring process. This will save valuable time of the company. When one of the team members leave job in the future, your first point of discovery would be to look at the priority list and see if they are still interested or not.
Career growth
Now that you have hired great developers, graphic designers, QA engineers and content creators – it is time to retain them. A company with a low retention rate usually has common issues that can be fixed if taken the right steps. If an employee feels their career has halted and that there is no more learning or growth in their job – they will look for other options. Naturally, every individual wants to have a better job title, more income and learn new tricks of their trade. If you hire a developer, and he/she doesn’t get to become a team lead even after 2 years of hard work and dedication, he/she will look for other options. To retain team members, give everyone opportunities for career growth – whether it is the learning curve, change in their job title or yearly increment.
Reward system
A study conducted by the University of Arizona discovered that when rewards are offered to team, it results in more cohesion. Being a manager, if you reward a team member for their extraordinary work or doing work before the deadline by a simple praise in front of everyone – it will go a long way. Words of appreciation, a team lunch, and bonuses can have a positive impact on the productivity of team members. Usually an individual looks for a new job because they are not happy with their current workplace. When employees are praised for their work and given their due bonuses – they will stick with the company.
Lead by example
If you act like a true leader, the team members will follow you and would want to remain in the company even if they are offered a better salary. When you put you team members first and always take care of their work issues, have a good professional relationship with them – it creates trust between the team members and the manager. When a company has a team-oriented culture that focuses more on the team efforts and value their employees – employees feel confident and important.
Bottomline
Attracting top talent and then retaining it is not easy but if you do it the right way – you are on the road to success and glory. If you are currently looking for dedicated and expert developers and QA engineers for your next project – contact Zepto Systems today. We have been working for more than 10 years with local and international UK clients. Our remote, full-time resources work with our clients on their projects. Get in touch with us to get a free quote!