Is it time to change your company’s HR strategy and recruitment processes? Expert insights on when it is necessary | Business

April 12, 2024 According to Sodra’s data, in 2023 the employee turnover rate in Lithuania in various sectors reached about 41%. The accommodation and catering services sector faced the most turnover of employees – the average was 95.5 percent.

This shows that retaining talented employees remains a challenge for companies. According to the market expert, in order to ensure a stable team that will help the company grow, you need an appropriate human resources (HR) strategy and constantly monitor the signals that show that the existing HR methods are no longer working.

Personal archive photo/Jurgis Kovas, head of “Biuro”.

HR strategy is the compass of the organization

According to Jurgis Kovos, head of Biuro, the largest recruitment and personnel selection company in the Baltic States, companies in Lithuania are beginning to understand that complaints that universities do not train the necessary specialists are of no use.

So, businesses try to take care of good candidate selection, employee introduction and proper training themselves – for this they look for a high-level HR manager, while smaller companies turn to freelance consultants or recruitment companies for help. However, these decisions are only the beginning towards a good HR strategy.

HR strategy covers many areas of the company – from hiring, employee induction, salary cuts to existing opportunities for improvement, clarity of positions. Therefore, well-planned HR actions ensure seamless and consistent operations throughout the organization and save time that would otherwise be spent by each department or division creating its own rules.

According to the expert, a good strategy also allows employees to clearly know the company’s processes, their role and opportunities, and for managers, the presence of structure helps them make decisions based not on personal beliefs or emotions, but on existing procedures. Thanks to the clarity of the described processes, conflicts, discrimination and other possible risk factors are also avoided.

Red flagindicating that it’s time for a change – high turnover

A major indicator that existing HR methods are no longer working is high employee turnover. It can be caused by many reasons – too much work, low salary, not finding meaning in work or lack of opportunities for growth, but in some cases a mistake occurs in the hiring process. One more red flagwhich reports on a poor HR strategy – decreasing employee engagement, when the employee’s motivation and enthusiasm disappear, as well as the desire to communicate openly.

In order to avoid such consequences, it is becoming increasingly important in the HR strategy to assess candidates based on skills, giving them the opportunity to perform the task, rather than gender, age, race or even education and experience. Skill-based recruitment is increasingly used to successfully recruit talented employees.

“This type of recruitment is necessary to achieve greater employee attraction, which is part of a good HR strategy – leaving no room for prejudice and subjective assessment. If a company is looking for a young employee in the IT department because the previous senior person “didn’t work out”, this is already an assumption, although what is really sought is IT skills.

If we determine exactly what knowledge and abilities are needed and prepare a standardized test that will show whether the candidate’s skills are suitable, then age and gender will not matter. Therefore, the list of potential employees grows, because not only young candidates will be considered”, said the manager of the selection company.

The cultivation of the HR strategy is determined by the timely identification of problems

It is important for the organization to cover the basic aspects of HR: to have a candidate selection standard, an employee induction process, position descriptions that ensure that everyone knows their role, salary ranges and evaluation criteria that allow tracking results and properly evaluating the employee (annual performance evaluation, goal setting, training plans and etc.).

However, in order to improve the HR strategy, according to the expert, it is necessary to understand that this is a continuous process closely related to the identification of problems, because it is then that the necessary changes are realized.

A good example is the company Amazon, which identified a potential problem in advance – in the near future, warehouses will be automated and the number of operators with programming, maintenance, etc. will increase. skills, need, what can lead to their lack.

Thus, the company solves the problem by educating its willing and able employees so that they have the necessary skills and can fill specific jobs within the company in the future. Such programs increase employee motivation, extend their working time in the company, and help the company prepare for strategic transformation.

J. Kovo’s main tips for HR strategy:

• implement at least basic HR processes: have a candidate selection standard, a clear onboarding process, position descriptions, etc.;
• rely on skills-based recruitment;
• look for the root of the problem: for example, high turnover of new hires can be caused by the wrong candidates or an incomplete onboarding process, while onboarding can be difficult due to a poor or poorly communicated value proposition;
• conduct regular employee opinion surveys and take into account their expectations;
• conduct surveys after the employee’s onboarding process or before they leave the job, so you’re likely to get honest opinions on which areas need change.