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Employee Well Being: What Does it Mean for Recruiting and Retention?

babyhandsYoh has embarked on a study, in cooperation with HRO Today, to determine how employees feel about job security. The Employee Well Being Study is a quarterly survey of employees that can help companies gauge how employees are feeling about their jobs. But more importantly, perhaps it’s a leading indicator of whether or not employees will stay on the job (or, listen to job offers from other companies).

Released in February, the HRO Today study is currently being updated for Q2 of 2015. In its current state, the study shows employees are generally satisfied and secure in their jobs, however differences arise when you look at age, gender and race.

These statistics would be interesting on their own, but the question becomes: How should this and similar data be used to inform recruiting and retention efforts? The answer lies within your own demographics as they relate to the study.


What the Study Reveals

The study reveals that younger workers tend to trust leadership more than older workers, but those at a lower income level trust less than those at higher incomes. So, if you are employing a lot of younger workers, but they are at a high income level, they may have great trust in leadership. And, that would be something to reinforce.

Conversely, if you employ many older workers at lower levels of income, you may have trust issues and may need to increase communication and transparency to help combat this. Or simply put, they may take more convincing when leadership comes to them with changes in the organization.

Another interesting data point is the likelyhood of a promotion. When asked if they feel they will receive a promotion in the next 12 months, men were more likely to say yes than women. Not surprisingly, younger workers were also highly optimistic about a promotion as well. This means that if you have a lot of younger men working in your organization, without a clear path of advancement, you may be at risk for losing them.


How Does it Impact Recruiting and Retention?

Getting back to my original point: What does this mean for recruiting and retention? It means that you need to look inside your organization to determine if you are competitive with salaries, providing career advancement paths or offering similar soft and hard benefits that will help you attract and retain workers. The types of recruiting efforts and messages may also need to change to include all of the mix of workers at your organization.

For retention, when you look at the study, view it from the point of view of a current employee. What would make you want to leave? What data points might indicate that you have a gap in your current benefits or your culture that may make certain types of workers susceptible to listening to offers from other companies?

Lastly, does your industry or business model make it easier or more difficult? Like most things in business and in life, there isn’t one answer, but data like the Employee Well Being Study, can give you more to go on that just your gut feeling about what employees really think and feel.

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This blog was written by Matt Rivera. Matt serves as Vice President, Marketing and Communications and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Yoh’s marketing and brand communications. Matt holds a degree in Journalism/Public Relations and has been working in the staffing industry for more than 25 years. Prior to this role, Matt held many different roles from branch recruiting and proposal writing to technology management and online marketing.

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