How to attract and retain worker talent

A challenge that not all companies in the automotive sector know how to face

We all know that people are the foundation of organizations, so attracting and retaining talented workers are two of the key elements for achieving results in any serious human resources planning.

If we know they are key elements, then… What actions do we take to make our organizations effective and efficient? Getting to the point: What can we do to ensure that those people with special talent end up joining our teams and stay for a long time?

These questions in a sector like automotive are particularly challenging… because although we all theoretically know what we can do to recruit and retain talent, certain data, as we will see below, suggest that it remains a pending issue in many Spanish automotive distribution groups.

A practical case

On one occasion, one of our clients, in the first recruitment process we undertook for them, proposed that “if the candidate they hired did not remain in their position for at least one year, we should refund the amount invoiced for the position”… In this way, we were being asked, as recruiters, to possess extrasensory abilities to know in advance the circumstances that could occur over a year in the worker’s relationship with the company, and vice versa, without the company clearly indicating what strategies it follows with employees to retain their talent, to motivate them, or to evaluate their commitment: How could we know, then, whether the worker’s relationship with the company, in its natural feedback, was satisfactory? How could we take responsibility for something beyond our control? Even beyond theirs.

A study that corroborates the assumption

According to a recent study by the ADP Research Institute, a leading global provider of Human Capital Management solutions, in its report The evolution of work 2.0, for which more than 8,500 employees and companies in 13 countries were surveyed, major differences were found between the promises companies made to attract their employees and what was actually happening.

57% of employees in Europe state that the expectations they had when joining their company have not been met. And one more telling fact: one of the reasons why people leave organizations is due to the limited professional development they receive.

From our Selection Center, we take these data very much into account and we are achieving fully satisfactory results. Not only do we help employers bring in talented candidates. In addition, we provide other services that add value to talent attraction and retention, such as: an exhaustive analysis of the position to be filled, through specific tests designed for this purpose. If we add to this a suitable onboarding plan that helps with the candidate’s integration and training, along with another series of services focused on HR organization, talent retention becomes closer to being achievable, and the success and consolidation of business strategies become a reality that, in light of the data, remains far from desirable in a large number of European companies.

Sara Martos
Talent Development Manager
dealerBest