Employer of Choice
Great people are hard to find and keep, so becoming an Employer of Choice makes great business sense. Find out how to become an Employer of Choice and get started today!
Why Become An EOC?
Today's workforce issues affect all employers - your business, too, may be feeling the effects of:
• Skills shortages
• Low unemployment rates
• Pending retirement of baby boomers
• Recruitment, attraction and retention issues
• Productivity challenges
As an employer, you can't change economic or labour market trends, but you can change the way you respond to these issues. If you want to attract, recruit and retain skilled workers for peak performance in your workplace, becoming an "Employer of Choice" will give you a key competitive advantage.
Stay
Assessing Your Company's Capacity to Retain Employees
Becoming the Employer of Choice for the people who already work for your company is another challenge. For some employees, the company they now work for is one they would want to stay with for a long time. Others may wish to pursue a different career path or seek an employment environment with a better work/life balance, find an opportunity to learn something new, increase their pay and benefits or achieve other goals.
Indicators that you may be having problems retaining employees
How do you know if you are having trouble getting people to stay with your company? The most common quantitative measure is "employee turnover".
Calculating Turnover
The most common method of calculating turnover is to count the number of employees at a given date and determine what percentage of those employees is new in comparison to the previous year. To illustrate: there were 100 employees at the beginning of last year, and 100 employees at the beginning of this year. Out of 100, 84 are the same employees. The turnover rate is 16% by using the following equation: 100 minus 84 = 16; 16 divided by 100 = 16%.
Some Complications
The above method will work for most situations. It will not, however, indicate the fact that one of the 16 who has left has been replaced more than once, for instance.
Another complication that can make the numbers difficult to compare across companies or time, is fluctuations in the size of the workforce. Suppose the work force is 100 at the beginning and 90 at the end of the year. Perhaps 16 people have left, but only 6 have been hired during the year, while 2 more were hired and retired within the same year.
In addition to looking at overall rates, you might also consider which jobs are the most difficult to fill, and to keep filled. If a key job requiring specialized or difficult-to-find skills is frequently turning over, it might indicate a larger problem than frequent turnover in a job that is easily filled.
Perform
Assessing a Company's Capacity to get People to Perform
Once you do find the right people - an ongoing challenge in a tight labour market - retention efforts are important but so is the ability to motivate people to perform at their best. In tourism businesses in particular it is vital to ensure that the service your people provide meets or exceeds customers' expectations.
In tourism, it is critical that staff perform at a high level because customer service and expertise is critical to repeat business and positive word of mouth.
Indicators that your company may be having difficulty getting people to perform at their best
Indicators of "Performance" vary by company, but most can use indicators such as:
• Repeat Customers and referral business - this can be measured through visitor surveys and customer sales records.
• Sales per employee: Total sales divided by the number of employees, a classic measure of productivity. The higher the figure, the more output is achieved by each employee.
• Profit per employee: Profit before tax divided by the number of employees. The higher the better and the safer the jobs.
• Return on sales (percentage): Profit before tax divided by sales. The higher the figure, the better the performance of the organization.
• Return on capital employed (percentage): Profit before tax divided by the total of capital employed, including assets and long-term liabilities. The higher the figure, the better use is made of capital.
• Return on assets managed (percentage): Profit before tax divided by total tangible assets used by the business. As with the previous indicator, the higher the figure, the better use is made of capital.
Adapt
Assessing a Company's Capacity to get People to Adapt to Change Companies are tested most severely during times of change, particularly change that is imposed from outside, but also during times of change that are self-imposed. Ken Blanchard, author of the One Minute Manager, says there are seven truths about change that we need to understand:
1. Change makes us feel awkward, ill-at-ease, self-conscious - expect it!
2. Change makes us think first about what we might lose or have to give up - allow people time to mourn.
3. Change makes us feel alone, even when everyone else is going through it, so we need to encourage people to talk to one another about the change.
4. We can only handle so much change at one time so don't overdo it.
5. We are all at different readiness levels for change and we need to accept those differences.
6. Change makes us feel we do not have enough resources to cope so we need to encourage creative searches for new ways to respond.
7. When the pressure to change is off, we quickly revert back to old behaviours, so if the change is important, we can't back off.
Indicators that your company may be having difficulty managing change
• Recent, significant change in the employee turnover rate
• Recent significant increase in employee complaints
• Resistance by top management to making necessary changes based on company's previous negative experiences
• Increased use of sick leave
• Increase in lateness or absenteeism
• Failure to respond to significant opportunities or threats brought about by changes in the marketplace, the introduction of new technologies, new competitors, economic or demographic shifts, or otherwise.
