Recruit. To supply with new members or employees. To engage. Re-recruit. To confirm, to re-engage. To renew or restore the health, vitality, or intensity of employer-employee relationships. To gauge the strength and loyalty of your workforce, invest resources in a re-recruitment campaign. Through this process, you can gain a better understanding of the stability, dedication, and preparedness of your employees. This deeper appreciation of the viability of your workforce is particularly valuable when you anticipate a change in your external environment that may adversely affect the dependability of your employees. Background Remember when you hired those wonderful people who work with you? You went through interviews, background checks, and perhaps a bit of persuasion to bring them on-board. Now they've been with you for a while. Do you take them for granted? More importantly, might they think that you take them for granted? Wise employers periodically re-recruit their valuable team members. This technique is especially important in a competitive employment environment. If other employers will be interested in recruiting your best people, it's smart strategy to beat them to the punch! Think about what you did to attract your good employees. When they showed interest in working for your company, what did you do? Did you interview the applicants, asking about their background, their accomplishments, and what they hoped to gain from employment with your organization? Did you conduct background checks, including talking with references to learn about the applicant's strengths and shortcomings? Were you concerned about how they'd fit into your culture and how you might best support them to learn, grow, and excel in your environment? Did you engage in conversations about their career goals? Re-recruitment is a similar process, conducted with employees who are already part of your team. Old hands and relatively new team members all deserve your attention and a recheck of their relationship with you. They want to feel valued. Begin with an interview. Instead of asking about experience with other companies, as you would in a recruiting interview, ask about the employee's experience with your organization. What has been learned? What has been accomplished? Talk about expectations not yet met. Explore interest in learning new skills, assuming new and different responsibilities. You may find that your employee is a happy camper. Or you may discover opportunities to strengthen your bonds with this important member of your team. Background checks? Talk with people who work with this employee. What's their evaluation of the employee's "fit" in the company, performance, contribution? Peer interviews can be rich in uncovering information that will be helpful to both employer and employee. You might find a 360-degree assessment process to be worthwhile. With a little creativity, this process could serve as your annual performance appraisal, with a twist. Questions to Ask...Issues to Explore Re-recruiting interviews should be friendly conversations, not at all adversarial. This time together will give you an opportunity to learn more about your employee, your employee's level of satisfaction, and changes you might consider in job assignment or the way you do things. Here is a starter list of topics, which is not at all complete:
What to Do Next With the information you gather, you'll be able to apply the knowledge to engage in some serious strategic staffing. The first step is Tactical Workforce Planning. In this work, look closely at your workforce situation over the next six to eight months.
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