Chesterton Global, HR director, Karen Orr talks recruitment and retention, using staff satisfaction surveys and exit interviews, all during a period of change in the company.

Chesterton Global Recruitment and Retention

Property company, Chesterton Global, was established over 200 years ago. It is currently going through a period of enormous change since going into receivership in 2005. This has created interesting challenges for HR Director, Karen Orr, not least of all, as far as staff retention is concerned.

Originally there were three divisions but currently there is only one – Residential. Karen has been concentrating on getting the HR side of things back up and running and putting strategy in place.

Karen is responsible for recruitment and the company has in place practices which amount to a talent management and employee retention strategy.

Attrition has a critical impact on any organisation. Karen Orr said, “Attrition is clearly detrimental to an organisation’s effectiveness primarily due to the cost to recruit and train people.

“It has an impact on customer service and ultimately will slow down our growth and progress whether that is from a financial or market share perspective.

It undermines our ability to become what we want to be: from an HR perspective that is being an employer of choice. From the business point of view it could be driving revenue or growing the number of units we have.”

However, good recruitment is the start point of any staff retention process.

“If you can make the funds available, it’s a good idea to invest in understanding retention issues: it can help you to appreciate what your employees want.”

Getting the Basics of Recruitment Right

“If you don’t get recruitment right you will have a problem with employee retention,” Karen says. “It’s a critical and more obvious part of the chain as, when you don’t have the right people in place, it’s very apparent.

“However, if you can make the funds available, it’s a good idea to invest in understanding staff retention issues: it can help you to appreciate what your employees want. It’s easy for an organisation to assume it knows what its employees are looking for and, on occasion, put the wrong measures in place.”

Karen is working hard to develop a more rigorous recruiting process within her HR department. The company’s aim is that smarter recruiting can slow down attrition rates.

Karen says, “Sometimes managers are desperate just to get someone, anyone, in place instead of concentrating on getting the right person.

“It is disappointing to lose people at any time but particularly during the probation period so we work with our managers to ensure that we do get the right people first off.

“A skilful manager is an essential element in both recruitment and retention. You can have the right processes in place but if you don’t have the right attitude or understanding, you are never going to resolve the issue.”

Chesterton Global is in the process of putting a variety of measures in place to train managers in recruitment skills such as competency models and has just introduced psychometric testing. The work is on-going and will include training on developing staff.

“We need to concentrate on developing meaningful career progression and development opportunities,” she says.

“Top performers need to be managed differently. We need our managers to understand this and supply them with the right tools.”

Changing Management Perceptions

In the property sector, one of the main challenges to staff retention is often management perception.

Karen explains, “There is a view as to what type of person fits a particular type of role. “This perception needs to change.

“Many managers are team focused and don’t always think about the actual output of the team. Very often teams are young and they think bringing a mature person into this environment will be wrong for the team. However, it could be a good thing for the organisation.”

She adds, “Top performers need to be managed differently. We need our managers to understand this and supply them with the right tools.

“We also need to get serious about succession planning which is high on the list of priorities at the moment.”

Staff Satisfaction Surveys and Chesterton Global

Part of Chesterton Global’s HR reconstruction involves putting a clearly defined staff retention strategy in place. Karen used great{with}talent’s staff satisfaction tool, Talent Engage, to start the process of understanding employee expectations and needs.

“If there are two things I could pick out that we are working on at the moment they would be building and retaining the trust of our employees through a number of mechanisms, and aiming to provide stimulating careers that meet the financial expectations of our top performers,” says Karen.

“Through the staff satisfaction survey we identified that rewards and benefits are at the top of list for our top performers.

“It is a really useful employee survey. To an extent it just confirmed some of things we had in mind. But it was great to be able to present it back to employees and for them to be reassured by the anonymity. They found the feedback really interesting not to mention amusing in parts.”

In addition to the staff survey, Chesterton Global has introduced great{with}talent’s online exit interview. This is a fairly recent introduction and the data hasn’t yet been properly analysed. The intention is to compare it with the results from ongoing satisfaction surveys.

“I’d like to be able to pull out different groupings, for instance, high performers or managers,” says Karen.

“It will be helpful in reassuring us that the staff survey findings are correct. Perhaps we will see some differences in the reasons people give for leaving.”

“Focusing on staff retention is not something you can do and think that’s it for the next three years. It’s something you need to keep revisiting.”

Staff Retention is a Constantly Moving Force

One of the problems with employee retention is that it doesn’t stand still. As soon as one issue is addressed, another occurs. Juggling issues to prevent a knock-on effect is something that Karen is more than aware of.

“We know the areas where we are struggling or doing really well and so understand what needs to be addressed,” she says.

“We also know the areas that might become a problem if we’re not careful. However, we can’t work on everything at once. If we address things that are not good at the moment, then, unless we are really careful, it could adversely impact another area.

“In a sense, we’ve always got to keep reinventing what we are doing – which is one of difficulties with staff retention.

“Focusing on employee retention is not something you can do and think that’s it for the next three years. It’s something you need to keep revisiting. It needs to be looked at on an annual basis if not more frequently. Then it’s about how you follow through.”

Contact great{with}talent and find out more about their TalentEngage employee engagement surveys.

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(Main image from Snelling)