While hiring someone straight out of university is an exciting prospect for both your organisation and the individual graduate, what you don’t want is to spend the next few years training and moulding that graduate into a knowledgeable and experienced asset – only to lose them to your competition.

Take a long hard look at those you have recently hired. How long will it take for them to realise the potential you believe they have? A year? Two? Five years? How many of them do you believe will still be with you in five years’ time?

Ask yourself different questions.

Or maybe you should be asking yourself a different question. Maybe you need be asking them if they feel they are learning what they want to learn, achieving what they want to achieve. Do they feel like accepted and valued members of the team? Do they see the potential to grow and develop, to climb the ladder, to increase their earning potential? Do they feel like their efforts are being recognised? Are they being offered different opportunities to develop in other commercial disciplines?

While there is no guarantee of retention, there are many practices you can integrate into your organisation that will ensure your new graduate recruits can reply to all of those questions in the affirmative and build a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with your organisation. Although ‘jobs for life’ have an old-fashioned tone about it, the reality is that employee retention is crucial for business.

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Maintain a clear and dynamic career path.

The definition of a thriving employee is someone who is always learning and progressing. A thriving employee is an asset to the business because they bring new ideas and energy and contribute to an environment that is constantly changing. While constancy and consistency are both positive in essence, it is change that sets the great from the good.

Every employee needs to have access to clearly defined progression through the business based on the achievement of certain goals and targets. This starts from their first day. A new graduate recruit who sees and understands this is going to ensure that they do everything in their power to achieve that progression.

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Implement a proactive training programme.

Training the individual will help the business. Training helps them to grow as individuals, prepares them for higher responsibilities and teaches them how to develop greater critical thinking.

The globe is evolving quickly, and on a commercial level, changes are happening all the time that require integration into business practices to ensure an organisation’s survival. Training is a critical part of maintaining that cutting edge.

A dynamic training programme brings much-valued external expertise into different areas of your business, but it also demonstrates that you value your employees enough to invest in them. Your workforce is one of the most expensive assets and ensuring that they are in tip-top ‘condition’ is as important as maintaining the engine of a car.

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Nurturing a work culture that is positive and dynamic.

Studies have cited that a third of job seekers would give up their perfect job if the workplace culture were not a good fit for them.

Workplace culture is not just about having a ping pong table and multi-coloured beanbags. Workplace culture puts the employee at the heart of its operations. It is the attitude, values, and ethics of the way in which everyday activities are carried out.

A negative culture often involves internal bullying or gossiping; there may be a derogatory approach to taking time out for personal issues. Over time, employees pick up on the ‘bad vibes’ of toxic workplace culture, and their own performance and productivity levels are adversely affected. In short, bad workplace culture is contagious.

If you recognise this, you need to ensure that a strategy is implemented to turn this trend around completely. Clearly set out the positive values that you want to encourage, and stamp out the negative ones, once and for all.

When you consider that 75 per cent cited workplace culture as a defining reason for wanting to work with a certain organisation, you want to be making sure that you are enticing that 75 per cent.

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Contact us for further guidance about crafting a healthy workplace culture or alternatively upload your vacancy today to see how we can help expand your team and hire your next graduate for your sales team.