The tight talent market right now is making recruitment tricky for all businesses. In late 2022, there were more jobs available than people to fill the roles, and according to the National Skills Commission, recruitment was consistently more difficult last year compared with 2021. So, what is to come in 2023? Sally Elson, Head of People, MYOB, shares her thoughts.

So, you want to ensure your business is as enticing as possible to attract the best talent, and when you find them, you want to do everything you can to keep them in your business.

Investing in your employee experience is one way to do this.

The importance of a great employee experience

According to MYOB research, four in five small to medium-sized businesses in Australia are doing exactly that as a result of the competitive hiring market. It’s paying off too – with 83 per cent of people working for small or medium-sized businesses believing their workplace offers a good employee experience.

What exactly is employee experience? Well, I regard it as everything someone encounters and feels while at work – from the job application to the first day, the work culture and environment, employee engagement, benefits on offer, business leadership and so much more.

The good news is that there are so many ways you can look to improve employee experience, and it doesn’t necessarily need to cost you money.

Here are some tips on how to approach this:

1. Assess how you could improve your onboarding process

Onboarding relates to everything a new hire experiences, from the moment they accept the role through to becoming a fully-fledged team member. It is often overlooked, but it’s the first impression someone has in your business and first impressions matter. According to our research, 71 per cent of people would be put off staying in a business if they had a bad onboarding experience, and over three-quarters believe onboarding can make or break a new hire’s experience with a company.

There are plenty of opportunities to make tweaks and improvements to this process. This could be assessing how to make a new hire’s first few days more interactive, and making sure you catch up with them on an informal basis to get to know them better. Providing clarity on achievable goals aligned to your business objectives will also mean they’ll have clear direction and impact from the start.

2. Empower people to make decisions

Small businesses often have an advantage over bigger businesses, because employees can have more direct input into key business decisions. Use this to your advantage and bring your team into the fold.

Keeping an open dialogue around the business strategy and priorities and being open to contributions from the team can help employees feel engaged and part of the business’ success.

3. Offer more learning, development and upskilling opportunities

According to our research, over a third (38 per cent) of people think their current employer could focus more on learning and training opportunities as part of their employee experience offering. This could be providing team members with hours off to attend workshops or conferences, or bringing in experts for a group upskilling session.

Once legislated, the Skills and Training Boost will help offset the cost of skilling your people (and yourself), allowing you to access an additional tax deduction of 20 per cent on these investments.

4. Promote flexibility

Offering a hybrid work environment is important in today’s post-pandemic culture, but this isn’t an option for all industries. If this applies to you, then consider how else you can promote flexibility. This could simply be actively encouraging team members to take more breaks or use more of their annual leave to avoid burnout, or assessing if you can offer flexibility over the times people work.

5. Invite discussion on mental health

Ongoing worries about the rising cost of living and economic uncertainty puts pressure on us all. Talking more about mental health could make a fundamental difference for everyone, but such conversations can be difficult. Best thing you can do is to ensure your employees know you will be there to support them, or direct them to someone who can help.

I’d recommend looking into the many free resources available, such as the Small Business Program we developed in partnership with Smiling Mind, which provides free proactive and preventative wellbeing support to small businesses owners.

Here’s hoping the talent tightrope eases soon, but regardless of the hiring conditions we should all be continuously assessing the employee experience we offer, regularly asking teams for feedback and taking action on the points raised.

A good employee experience can help attract and retain good people and will have a positive flow on effect on business performance, so it’s wonderful to see small and medium-sized enterprises giving this area of business the attention it deserves.

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