In today’s business world, regardless of the industry or discipline, attracting and retaining talented people can be a challenge. Considering the unique career preferences and ambitions of millennials entering the work force today, the challenges are even more daunting. But how does effectively managing information assets help when it comes to hiring talented people and reducing turnover? Can it? It can be an innovative retention strategy that sets you apart!
Let’s state the obvious. Employee turnover is expensive and disruptive. Any ways that an organization can reduce turnover is good. If you’ve gone through all of the time and effort to find and hire someone and expend resources for on boarding and to train them, why wouldn’t you do your best to keep them?
When employees join your team, they’re eager to make a positive impact. That’s exactly what you want them to do so it’s a match made in heaven! However, the business world has tended to lag behind as it relates to adopting technology to manage information assets. Old, slow legacy systems may still be in place and used. Information is stored in multiple locations (server file shares, file cabinets, dark spider- filled storage rooms) and simply knowing where information is could be a guess at best. Paper based operations are often still prominent, and file cabinets line office walls as if frozen in time from a previous era. In the end, business processes are often painfully slow and manually driven. In this scenario, as new employees settle in they are transported back in time becoming a slave to the “this is how we do it” syndrome. It’s at this crucial point where employee begin to question if this is where they will be able to achieve their career objectives.
Consider the flip side of this scenario. If an organization is leveraging technology and has established processes in place as to how and where information must be managed, companies can consider using this “operational excellence” as a recruiting tool. If the company is touting its progressive nature when recruiting talent, the precise control of how information is managed and processes are controlled is innovation that can be leveraged! Prospective employees get a positive feel for the structure of the organization, progressiveness, culture and a feel for how focused the organization is on its mission and objectives.
Consumerization has changed what employees expect in the business world; “If I can search the web and quickly find anything I need, why can’t I do that with our business information?” Is your business taking steps to get there? Has your organization established a digital strategy for the future? Have you started? Business at the speed of paper is simply not going to be acceptable in a few short years. The time to act is now.