How to attract, motivate and retain top talent
When I announced a workshop on the same topic as this blog post at this year’s Infobip Shift Developer Conference, I wasn’t sure if anyone would turn up.
After all, the news this year has been dominated by rounds of tech layoffs as the changing interest rate environment has made investments in stocks, private equity, and venture capital comparatively less attractive, putting an end to the capital abundance that drove tech hiring to feverish heights in previous years.
Was anyone in tech still struggling to attract and retain talent?
I wasn’t sure.
The organizers did their best to dampen my expectations, saying that even though the workshop room had capacity to seat 30 people, it might happen that only a few people would show up as workshops required a high level of time commitment from attendees, who often prefer to network and shop around for programs more freely.
I quietly wondered if driving 600km to Croatia to do this workshop was a mistake.
When I arrived at the venue, I arranged a dozen chairs in a semicircle in the workshop room and hoped that at least half a dozen people would show up. Ten minutes before our scheduled start, the first attendees arrived. Then, a few minutes later, a few more people entered the room. Then a few more.
By the time the workshop was supposed to start, the dozen chairs I carefully arranged were all filled. But people kept coming.
Soon, the 30 handouts I prepared for the workshop were all gone. But still more people came. I lost count at around 45, but more people kept arriving, and in the end I had to turn some people away.
The workshop ended up spilling over to two adjacent rooms to make space for group activities. It seemed that people still cared about attracting, motivating and retaining talent.
If you do, too, I hope you’ll find this post helpful.
Step 1: Begin with people’s needs in mind
Seven years ago, my colleagues and I began working with a group of psychologists at Attuned to distill what people need and value at work. After two years of research, the team distilled 10 factors other than money (aka Financial Needs) that motivate people:
None of this is truly surprising. After all, people want to be supported, mentored, and given opportunities to support and mentor others in return (Altruism).
They want to have some level of autonomy and flexibility to make their own decisions and schedule their own time. (Autonomy)
They want to derive a sense of achievement from their work and be part of a team and organization that excels at something. (Competition)
They want to be appreciated and recognized for their contributions and be given candid, caring feedback to improve. (Feedback)
They want to have some variety in their tasks and opportunities to explore and create new things. (Innovation)
They want to improve their skills and get progressively more challenging tasks that help them grow. (Progress)
They want to be part of the discussions and understand the rationale for decisions and plans. (Rationality)
They want to have clarity on expectations, the boundaries of their role, and the way things get done in the organization. (Security)
They want to build meaningful relationships at work and enjoy the time they spend with their colleagues. (Social Relationships)
And they want to feel respected and be given opportunities to further their career. (Status)
None of this is rocket science, and yet how many of these ten factors do most organizations consistently get right? But if you want to attract, motivate, and retain great talent, these are the needs you need to meet.
Our research at Attuned revealed that if more than two of an employee’s top six motivational needs are unmet, the risk of turnover increases fivefold. So how can you create an employee experience that consistently meets these needs?
Step 2: Anticipate and respond to needs as they arise
What does a prospective employee need when they first find out about a role at your company? How about when they participate in an interview with their future manager? And on their first day and week as they begin their onboarding process? Or every week and month as they settle into their new role? What about when they’ve been in that role for six months, a year, or two years?
Every interaction at work is a potentially important touchpoint, and yet there are some that may be more important than others depending on your goal. If you’re struggling to attract great people to apply to open roles, begin with mapping the touchpoints that are critical to boosting applications. If you notice high churn within new joiners’ first year in the role, focus on mapping the key touchpoints within that period. Then try to anticipate the needs that arise at those touchpoints, and tweak or introduce processes to meet those needs.
Let me give you an example from my previous role as Head of Product at a B2B software company that’s been very successful and well-known in its niche but relatively unknown to the wider tech community. As a result, we were aware that attracting experienced product managers from other tech firms might be a challenge.
The first touchpoint a potential new candidate sees when they consider applying for a role is often the job posting, so that’s where we started.
This is how we rewrote the first paragraph:
The original version was well written and factually accurate, but it was also much like any other job posting out there. It didn’t speak to potential candidates’ needs and didn’t differentiate the role from the hundreds and thousands of similar roles out there.
To rewrite it, we didn’t just randomly pick what needs to focus on. We used Attuned to measure what motivates the product managers who were already working, successful, and happy on the team, and then zeroed in on the motivational needs and values that were most salient on the team to attract candidates who would be a good fit in terms of what they needed and valued in a role.
We made many other changes to the posting along the same lines (too many to detail in this post), and I’m proud to say we received a lot of positive feedback on it from candidates. Some even said its content and wording were part of the reason they applied.
In fact, the changes proved so popular that over time the company adopted the new template for other roles as well, and a version of it is still being used, among others, for roles on the company’s development teams.
This, of course, is just one of many changes that had to be made.
Other touchpoints in the recruitment process that underwent major changes included our team’s interview process and the company’s career page. Many of these changes were driven by the company’s HR team, in collaboration with its marketing team, the team leads, and other managers who also had roles that were difficult to fill.
If you, too, want to take steps to attract more great talent to your company, the following template will hopefully be helpful in taking the first steps:
Of course, a typical journey through the recruitment process—not to mention the entire employee journey—comprises many more touchpoints. Many more needs might emerge at each step, and several actions might need to be taken to meet those needs. But the first step is often as quick and easy as rewording a nondescript job posting. You’ll be able to map and address all the other steps and needs as they become priorities later.
Step 3: Coach managers to adjust their leadership style flexibly
Most who have survived any length of time in a leadership role are aware that “one-size-fits-all” is a terrible recipe for people management. But many still lack the tools to truly personalize their leadership.
Human behavior—of leaders and team members alike—is the outcome of a complex amalgam of variables, from personality traits through competencies to motivational needs, values, and preferences, and a myriad of environmental and situational factors.
Unless you can train managers to be psychologists (or psychologists to be managers), neither of which sounds particularly feasible, your best bet is to equip managers with tools and training that will give them outsize leverage to adjust their leadership style flexibly to the person and situation at hand.
There is arguably no better place to start than helping leaders to hone their understanding of the human needs that drive motivation—i.e. the 10 factors mentioned above.
If you can also help them develop their active listening and coaching skills so they can better map and anticipate their team members’ needs in any situation, together with their assertive communication skills so they can articulate their own and the organization’s needs in ways that feel both clear and caring to team members, your leaders will already have a powerful toolkit at their disposal to motivate and retain team members.
So what is one thing you need to get started?
This article has been edited from its original form. To read the full version, visit The MotivatingManager Monthly on Substack.
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