How to retain the top talent in the workplace

I recently attended a breakfast seminar held by a recruitment agency on how to ‘retain talent in the work-place’.  Not being a morning person, I staggered into the city at 7.30 am in the morning with a bit of apprehension not knowing what to expect.  My immediate thoughts were, “Will this be just another sales pitch from a recruiter, poaching for new business?” I was pleasantly surprised to see a fully packed house at the Docklands Event Centre.

The presentation commenced on the theme of changing the nature of work life balance, which has been a hot topic for many years.   Millennials are bringing their own perspective to the issue: work-life integration. Millennials who have grown up with technology that allowed them to connect from almost anywhere anytime ask why do we need to be physically present in an office when many jobs involved duties that can be performed virtually or with an accommodating work schedule?

In the very near future, we will be  expecting to see more work-places offering flexible working hours to suit each individuals needs. We will no longer be restricted to traditional hours of 9 am to 5 pm and may have the opportunity to job share when suitable for some roles.

Work culture was the next topic of interest, covering open space floor plans and agile working environments, creating different working areas within the office where staff have the complete freedom and flexibility to work where they want, when they want. Working collaboratively and encouraging openness with the use of tools such has Trello and Slack and the use of full height whiteboard walls to visualise ideas.

A contentious topic – performance reviews was discussed where 33% of managers said they would prefer to conduct an annual review.  Whereas 20% want daily feedback, 20% want their manager or someone more senior to act as a coach and 34% want quality constructive ongoing feedback.

And the number one reason people look for another job is for more challenging or exciting work followed closely by a lack of career development.

I started five months ago – and I am thrilled to see that Energetiq has already implemented some of these initiatives and is up-to-date with the latest technology.  I was pleased to see that we use Slack as a collaborative tool and we just recently installed full height whiteboard walls everywhere for everyone to use and utilise 3D printing to create our holders for our whiteboard markers. And we love the work-life-balance where we can adjust our working day to meet day-to-day challenges.  Energetiq is a great place to be at everyday and the people are awesome!