There are surveys and then they are surveys! It must be the time of year for people stating the obvious, and seemingly wasting money doing so. Orange have released a study this week in Enterprise week, saying that small businesses lack the financial resources to attract talented people with high salary demands - thanks Orange Business Services for that blindingly obvious statement - I learnt that in 'o' level economics a long time ago!!
It goes on to say that 50% of the companies questioned lost their best staff to larger companies - this is called career progression Orange, and unsurprisingly it happens every working day in corporate life with small businesses being the starting point!! I would like to point out that as a recruiter I see this happening every single day, the best want to get better and have more and bigger challenges, and small businesses, however good they are, simply can't meet their needs.
The study goes on to say that improving staff motivation and development would contribute to company's growth - this is hardly rocket science here is it! what would be helpful Orange would be how the small companies are actually doing it!
The best obvious statement, I have saved for the end - only 12% of the companies felt that better pay would retain their staff! Everybody knows that money isn't one of the primary factors for recruiting and retaining staff, yes of course it is in the mix but there are more important factors such as type and quality of the role, training and development, career advancement, good management to mentor talent, reputation,company success, location, work / life balance and the opportunity to succeed.
Recruiting and retaining staff is one of the major business problems -for large and small companies alike - and as such it is a commonly discussed topic, so it would have been nice to see this survey, conducted with small companies to maybe take a different stance on this subject. Maybe one on how many companies are being innovative in their recruitment attraction strategies? or, How many of these companies actually understand the words recruitment or retention and what they actually mean to them? If you posed these two questions I would like to bet that you would find out why many small businesses struggle to get the talented people they need to join their companies.
