The Art of Attracting Top Talent: Strategies to Make Your Company Irresistible

For many burgeoning and established businesses, attracting top-tier talent is a priority. To remain competitive in the job market, businesses must ask themselves how they can be set apart to attract high-caliber employees and establish a positive reputation among job seekers. The answer comes down to three major attributes that will draw in the top talent you seek and make them want to stay. These are: healthy work environment, work/life balance, and fair compensation.

So, why are the Big Three the most important? Longevity. Companies may have great benefits and lack balance. Or, they may have fair compensation but difficulty growing beyond current roles. Many companies may have one or the other, but the key is obtaining them all. While it may necessitate some time to implement, the long-term effects of prioritizing these key pieces will lead to immense success and a reputation among job seekers. Here’s why: employees that are taken care of and able to maintain their personal lives feel more successful. They don’t feel they have to choose between work and life; they get fulfillment from both. This allows them to avoid burnout which is critical to long term success and avoiding employee turnover. Keeping people in roles they are trained in and energized to succeed in keeps a business successful. Clearing paths for employees to develop ensures they are working competitively to ascend to higher roles. Offering a fair wage for the work expected of them and the cost of living, lessens the odds that a role will have to be continuously filled, allowing less training time and greater productivity.

Implementing the Big Three can sound great on the surface, but there are small practical ways all three attributes are brought into the workplace:

Work/life balance

• Create clearly stated schedules and disclose expectations for hours worked per week and discourage work outside of those hours
• Compensate for any overtime worked and communicate where solutions can be found if the given hours are not proper length for the expected work to be completed
• Paid time off and sick leave accrual is necessary for maintaining a healthy and happy workplace and the amount a company can offer should be disclosed and easily accessible
• Acknowledgement of family life importance—maternity and paternity leave, options for childcare, or scheduling options for parents of young or special needs children
• Encouragement to take care of yourself—using vacation time, working efficiently during work hours, and unplugging
• No penalties for being unavailable during off hours to facilitate a healthy balance 

Work environment

• Establish communicative, objective leadership—employees want to communicate any boundaries or difficulties in performance to leadership that will listen and act; the way a team is led sets the tone for the environment
• Investment in employee well-being—check-ins and evaluations, asking employees about their work goals and helping them develop a plan to bring it to fruition
• Uphold company values—making the simple rules the forefront of an operation create lasting integrity for companies
• Teamwork—while employees are striving to grow, it should be clear that coworkers are there to give and receive help as results are as collectively celebrated as they are achieved.

Compensation

• Fair wage starting point—given the work expected and the cost of living, the wage should be enough to practically live on
• Raises for performance and loyalty—offering a raise in pay for excellence in performance or number of years served in a certain position shows gratitude and integrity. The level and skill with which an employee works gives just as much bragging rights to a company as it does an individual.
• Acknowledgement of achievement—whether a degree or certificate was awarded, allowing these achievements to be reflected by wage increases or a one-time bonus communicates to employees their achievements are valuable to the company.

While the specifics of a job will vary, creating an attractive workplace draws in top talent that will not only want to be employed by you, but will want to stay employed by you, offering their talents to grow an ever more successful enterprise.