Tech for Talent: Retaining employees
While it’s important to convince the right hires to join with your startup, it’s even more important to entice them to stay.
Retention can be especially difficult for startups since they are in a constant state of flux. Rob Catalano, Senior Director of Marketing at Achievers, started with the firm when there were only seven people on board. “When we started, there were a lot of people wearing a lot of hats. As we grew though, things started to get standardized and specialized. That’s when you notice people starting to leave, just because they don’t like change.”
Company culture matters: Hire those who fit
The best method to minimize turnover is to bring in people who are resilient and thrive in the face of change. Someone who has experience with a startup will know what the environment is like and will be more likely to stay on board. When Suneel Acharya was working with startup TalentBin in San Francisco, he noticed that “recruiting employees from traditional and larger firms into a startup was difficult, because their demands and expectations tended to be a lot higher.”
Helen Robert of Ottawa-based TechEdge told us about the period when Nortel shut down and the ex-Nortel employees were looking for new opportunities. “Many smaller companies got excited thinking there was so much talent available for hire. What they didn’t realize was that many of these people were not interested or willing to work for less pay, without defined jobs and career-path options. There were a lot of cultural challenges transitioning these ex-corporate employees into smaller firms.”
Catalano advises that startups be upfront about the state of flux of the organization when interviewing. “If a candidate gets excited by it, then it’s likely they will want to stick it through the ups and downs.” This is particularly important for senior hires, who may be less open to the decentralized decision-making processes that are often typical of a startup.
At Achievers, the team uses a method called “Top Grading” to assess candidates. This approach was developed by Dr. Brad Smart and involves putting candidates through a series of structured and in-depth interviews. Catalano says, “‘Top Grading’ discussions can take up to six hours, providing insight on a candidate’s patterns of success, dating all the way back to high school. When you sit with someone for so long and dig very deep, you really get to know a lot about the person.” For Achievers, the retention rate of the individuals they hire through Top Grading is over 90%.
Build and maintain a unique culture
We asked Derek Webb, a recent computer science graduate from the University of Waterloo, what he enjoys most about working at Xtreme Labs. “They do many different things to keep their employees happy, like providing free breakfast every morning. They set up a gaming room, TVs, a lounge―different things to give us breaks between coding.” Even when interviewing for his job at Xtreme, Webb got a strong sense of the company’s culture. “While other companies were just grilling me on my technical knowledge, Xtreme spoke at length about all the stuff they do when they’re not making products. It lured me in and made me really excited about the firm.”
Achievers puts a similar emphasis on its culture. In fact, they no longer have an HR department; rather, they have an “employee experience” group that is constantly thinking of new ways to give employees the best experience at work. Achiever’s VP Holly Tiessen says, “we have rarely lost people in the past because of a higher salary at another organization. We think that’s where our culture plays a big role.”
For his part, Webb knows he will have a hard time going back to a larger organization. While he did spend one of his co-op terms at a larger technology firm, he says “I wasn’t a fan of the hierarchy, or the lack of communication and collaboration that existed there.”
Keep employees engaged
Farhan Thawar, VP of Engineering at Xtreme Labs, believes in providing employees with lots of responsibility and challenges, regardless of their level within an organization. When it comes to hiring co-op students, Thawar makes it a point to give them “real” jobs. He makes them anchors on projects, which they are then fully responsible for delivering. As Webb explains, “we are encouraged to speak up and argue decisions and put forth ideas. At other companies I worked for, I was basically told what to do and really had no say whatsoever.”
Another tactic Xtreme uses is to issue weekly releases of all their mobile apps. Thawar tells us that “the co-op students like this because they feel like they actually accomplished something when their internship comes to an end.”
At Achievers, Tiessen tells us they are very sensitive to the needs of Gen Y in wanting opportunities for career progression. “We make sure we give our employees the chance to move around and move up. For example, people have gone from our call centre to our client success team and eventually into sales.”
Ultimately, you should constantly treat your employees like someone is trying to poach them, and give them too many reasons to not want to leave!
