Powerful Storytelling: An Event

Everybody is talking about recruitment and retention challenges. Where do we find qualified individuals to do the work of our organization and once we find them, how do we keep them? A December 2015 SHRM survey of 600 randomly selected employees, Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement: Shedding Light on the Business of HR, reports that 88% of employees report overall satisfaction with their current job and feel confident they can meet their work goals. This is the highest level of satisfaction over the last 10 years.

And, yet, 45% of employees reported that they would be likely or very likely to look for other jobs outside their current organization within the next year. That means that almost half of these employees who are overall satisfied with their jobs would entertain a position with another organization. These are the people you want working at your organization. The trouble is that these are the same people everyone else wants working at their organizations too!

This SHRM report explains that the top reasons employees are engaged in their jobs include their relationships with co-workers, the meaningfulness of the job, the work itself, their relationship with their immediate supervisor, and opportunities to use skills and abilities. That means engagement isn't about the salary or the perks or the hours. It's about the shared experiences an employee has. And shared experiences become the story that your organization tells itself, its customers and its employees.

Those stories can be powerful tools for recruitment and retention. An organization that understands the story it tells and that takes an active role in shaping that story has a significant advantage in recruiting the best employees and in keeping them engaged.

What are the stories that your organization needs to tell, how do you uncover them, how do you tell them and who do you tell them to?

We've developed a one-day seminar, Building Your Brand Through the Employment Experience, to provide you with the tools you need to use your organization's story to evaluate candidates and build your organization's culture.