I’m sure you must have played with puzzles at some point of your life. After endless hours of sorting the pieces by color and many attempts, you manage to put every piece in its place and you are finally able to rejoice with the image they create — an image as beautiful as the effort that made it possible.
Metaphorically speaking, a company is kind of the same thing. A huge puzzle that, instead of pieces, has employees. Together, they make up the human capital of a company and they are as valuable and essential as the results they get when they work together as a team.
Every year, at EAE, and together with the International Organisation of Human Capital Directors (DCH - for its initials in Spanish), we prepare the “DCH Barometer - Talent Management in Spain” report, in which we analyse the 4 stages of the cycle that employees go through when working in companies: Attraction, Engagement, Development and Disengagement . Our goal is to discover —with the help of the greatest experts in Human Resources— which are the projects and trends that stand out in the Talent Management sector and reveal the beautiful image that comes up when all the pieces of the puzzle work together
1.- Attraction: Juniors win the game, but Seniors move up the corporate ladder.
In the job hunting contest between Junior, Middle Management and Senior profiles, there are no better judges than recruiters — and it’s clear for them: Junior profiles stand out taking 37.9% of the jobs. Yet, they show a 7.6% decrease with regards to previous years. Quite the contrary is the case of Senior profiles, who have shown a 9.8% increase. However, only 24% of the companies implement relocation or digital transformation programmes for them. This presents a significant challenge for companies: they will have to devote more effort to retaining those experienced profiles.
This being the case, one would imagine that companies would increasingly bet on Young Talent Programmes but, is this really what happens? 54% of companies say YES. But, comparing the results with previous years, it all seems to suggest that the real answer is NO, since there’s a 6% decrease in the development of such programmes.
Mostly, the trend indicates that companies are more inclined to keep or increase their staff.
2.- Engagement: flexibility, career plans and a good leadership are all the ingredients you need in order to have a happy employee.
Human Resources managers know that the key to a successful company is to foster employee satisfaction. That’s why, in this year’s report, there’s a new fundamental issue that hadn’t been previously addressed: the emotional salary — all of those non-economic compensations that improve the life quality of employees like, for example, promoting a healthy work-life balance. Thanks to this approach, we found out that 44% of employees deem it important to have a flexible schedule, while 27% are pleased with working from home.
Companies want their employees to feel a sense of belonging. For this, 92% of them carry out onboarding and corporate immersion programmes, of which 50% are carried out in the first week of work. These numbers show a marked increase in these kinds of practices. However, there’s an 18% decrease in policies and strategies for commitment and loyalty management that must be addressed this year.
3.- Development: to harvest the product of talent, it’s not enough to sow the seeds — you must also provide nourishment.
Talent is everywhere, but you need to know how to spot it. For this, 61% of the companies that were surveyed carry out Talent Spotting programmes. They use a combination of specific knowledge and tools that make it possible to gather enough information on the candidates to improve the selection process. In these programmes, the profile with most participation is “Middle Management”, with a 42% rate — followed by the “Junior” profile, with a 31% rate.
Nevertheless, if an employee is expected to bring benefits for the business, it’s crucial to keep training them through Career Plans — just like 55% of the companies do. Likewise, 36% claim that between 75% and 100% of their employees have received a variety of training in the past year, while 28% claim to put in the effort to offer some sort of training to more than half of the staff. In fact, the online training modality has been of great significance (34%) — showing a 22% increase with regards to last year (12%).
4.- Disengagement: salary and a lack of career advancement opportunities — the two reasons for departure.
Goodbyes can be many things, but they are never easy — and the workplace isn’t an exception. In order to be able to keep an employee from leaving, it’s crucial for companies to be aware of the main reasons behind this decision. And these are: lack of career advancement (24.88%) and salary (23.92%) — both of which have risen by 5% just in the last year.
In any case, if after putting in the effort to keep them, employees still decide to leave, it’s always a good thing to have a last interview to listen to their reasons — like 78% of the surveyed companies claim to do. Also, it’s important to keep in touch once they have left, so they can become brand ambassadors. Actually, this strategy is used by 48.85% of the companies.
Every area, every position and every worker plays a fundamental role in being able to reach the established company goals. That’s why it’s so important to have someone with a vantage point to see the whole picture from above making sure every piece is in its right place.
