Sustainable Solutions Series Edition #4: Home Grown Talent

How can you nurture and develop your entry-level workers, rather than simply attracting new talent by raising salaries?

In response to the recent Labour Market Statistics, this series will offer examples of ways in which recruiters and employers can thrive during low candidate availability. In this, the fourth in our series of articles demonstrating how you can manage the dwindling talent pool, we explore the value of home growing your talent.

Promoting from within and investing in Learning & Development can root your business in experienced and engaged employees. In particular, investing trust and time in young employees who are just beginning their career has numerous benefits, developing those with the potential to grow into key business leadership positions.

The benefits of nurturing young talent are:

• The opportunity to shape entry level workers into just what your organisation needs. New starters offer your employer/employee relationships a new start; they have comparatively few preconceived ideas of how they should do their job and are willing and keen to learn.
• Taking on and nurturing young talent encourages loyalty to your organisation.
• You can enjoy the immensely rewarding feeling of fulfilment in seeing someone you have nurtured grow into a valuable and independent member of the organisation.
• It reinforces the importance of learning within your organisation.
• Instigating a culture of development vastly improves your employer brand.
• Establishing this culture will create an environment in which, as Forbes put it, ‘employees can seek out challenges where they can develop without feeling like mistakes will set them back in their career or jeopardize their job’.

Of course, organisations are understandably wary about this approach, but ‘despite the considerable financial risks of investing in employees when they could then simply up and leave, advocates such as Sir Richard Branson promote that a company should ‘train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to’.’

In the next edition of Sustainable Solutions, we explore the uses and benefits of social media, demonstrating how you can utilise the digital world to attract and retain talent.

In association with The HR World, RSG facilitated a round table debate in September, entitled ‘The Myth of Talent Management’. The white paper following this round table will be released in November. In the meantime, please help yourself to previous white papers, free to download!

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