By Phil Harwood
 
As we move into a new year, it should be apparent that it has never been more critical to invest in your recruiting and retention processes with the right solutions. From my perspective, far too many companies are spending way too much on “solutions” that aren’t solutions at all because the results aren’t there. Other companies are spending way too little on recruiting and retention for a variety of reasons. And everyone is hoping to find some secret solution that nobody else has found yet.

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Of course, there is no secret solution. The only solution is to create a highly attractive workplace culture where employees are less inclined to leave, and more inclined to go out of their way to recruit others to join the company. A huge part of this “highly attractive workplace culture” is the recruiting process because it all starts at the beginning. The only solution is to invest more time, energy, and resources into making your recruiting process a well-oiled recruiting system.
 
The primary benefit of having a “well-oiled recruiting system” is to provide the best opportunity to hire the right people for the right jobs when you need them, with a repeatable, reliable, process-driven system.  
 
A secondary benefit of such a system is that it builds value into your company. At some point, every business owner will exit their business. When they do, a prospective buyer will look to see if the company’s internal systems are functioning without the owner’s involvement. The more the owner is involved, the less the value will be to the prospective acquirer. The less systematized the business is, the less valuable it is. Perhaps this secondary benefit is actually the primary benefit. 
 
The question then becomes how to create and implement such a system. This is where choosing the right partners becomes critical. Our friends at Team Engine provide a unique and highly effective solution but there’s more to solving this puzzle. Even a great solution, like what Team Engine provides, requires a systematized approach within the company itself. In my travels, I see far too many ad-hoc, hit-or-miss, inconsistent, and broken recruiting “systems.” So we have some work to do as an industry. 
 
My hope and prayer for 2023 is that we will continue to work diligently to overcome this great challenge. Our friends at Team Engine are all in. So is GrowTheBench. How about you? 

Now go forth.

Note:  This blog post was first published by Landscape Management magazine. Subscribe here.