Is your team looking to create a new role within your company? You’ll need employee retention data.
Before recruiting the right people to join their organization, many recruiters will consider what drove existing talent to join their company and the aspects of their culture that help retain this talent. However, just as equally important to recruiting is understanding why people leave an organization.
One way to determine this is to look at the retention data you have from past and current employees to understand what prompted people to leave. For example, feedback from employee surveys and exit interviews can reveal common reasons for churn among your teams.
These types of insights are invaluable when developing a new role—not only do they help you gain a deeper understanding of why people leave, but they can also help shape the needs for and core responsibilities of future roles.
At Lever, we’ve spent the past eight years building data-driven tools that enable companies to better understand their approach to recruitment and retention. Let’s walk through why retention data matters (and how it can inform your process of creating new roles).
What is employee retention data, exactly?
Employee retention data refers to all the data and insights your team applies to people management and decision-making when engaging employees and recruiting candidates.
This data can encompass everything from engagement, absenteeism, and churn to employee sentiment and feedback, risk of exit, resignation rate, and more. You’ll also look at data you capture through surveys, reviews, one-on-ones, and other HR tools you use to analyze how satisfied people are in their roles and with their work.
Why does employee retention data matter?
Employee retention data is crucial when creating new roles and the recommendations teams make around those roles. By understanding the reasons for churn in your organization, along with the success of your retention strategies, you can better determine how you’ll create new roles and how your HR team can position these roles in the market.
Let’s say, for example, that results from the past six months of employee engagement surveys show that members of your Product team feel unmotivated by a lack of direction and poor project management. At the same time, your company has experienced significant churn in this department, showing that lack of management is a key driver of people leaving.
This type of retention data delivers both value and insight to your recruiting team—it tells you, for instance, that your organization needs a more senior management role that can provide direction and clarity for certain teams struggling without it. Insights derived from data like this can help your team (and any members with hiring influence) make more informed, strategic recommendations for a new role and the candidate that fills it.
These insights also enable you to develop new roles on a more granular level, where job descriptions help you filter the best candidates for each role (think: impact descriptions).
Data makes role creation more intuitive
Deep data around employee retention and engagement will do more than just make hiring and recruitment easier; it will make role creation more intuitive.
For instance, you can take historical employee retention data and pair it with your company’s recruitment data (insights you can pull from our analytics tools, for example) to inform the specific demands and responsibilities a new role should have based on a range of data points.
Consider that reasons for employee churn may be reflected in feedback from candidates who have interviewed for roles similar to the one you’re looking to create. Again, it boils down to understanding the “why” and “how” behind your retention.
To do this, try the following:
- Compare the existing employee data you have with the data you gather through surveys or questions you share with candidates during recruitment.
- Then, analyze any core discrepancies between the data to determine where there might be a gap in the roles you currently have and the ones you’re looking to create.
- Share this analysis with your team to provide a deeper understanding as to which recommendations and input should inform the development of a new role. This can include both general and specific feedback gathered from surveys like EEO surveys.
Put your retention data to work
Undoubtedly, finding the right talent that will help grow and scale your business is one of the toughest aspects of recruiting. But creating those roles? Well, that can be even more challenging.
With many influencers and stakeholders in your organization ready to give input on who you should hire and which roles you should create, it’s crucial that you inform your hiring strategies using employee retention data.
Before asking for input from your teams, study your employee retention data and think strategically about its role in your process of creating and positioning new roles, both internally and externally.
The result is that your team will approach role creation strategically and effectively create the right roles to attract the best candidates and top talent to your organization.
You deserve better recruitment data
Sourcing, nurturing, and hiring top talent are no easy feats. From the first touchpoint to the offer letter (and beyond), understanding how your recruiting program is performing and where you can improve your process is key. At Lever, we believe organizations deserve the data that solutions like LeverTRM can provide, so you can leverage deeper insights to streamline how you hire.
Want to explore what LeverTRM can do for you? Let’s chat.