14 PR Leaders Reveal Best Practices for Recruitment and Retention in a Tight Market

Renewed economic growth, a strong job market and the evolving nature of work are “transforming the face of the labor market, resulting in changes in the skills American employers need, as well as new and different opportunities for American workers,” a new report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers says.

Recently we asked a group of senior communicators from brands and firms what keeps them awake at night. Their responses were similar to some of the observations mentioned in the White House report.

In addition to mentioning evolving technologies, upcoming trends and the best ways to use them to reach target audiences, nearly all of the communicators answered the keeps-me-awake question with a version of, “How do I attract young and experienced talent and keep it engaged, especially during a period of full employment?”

Many also mentioned anxiety about determining what combination of training, perks and so-called soft benefits will keep talented communicators on the job.

With this in mind, we asked senior communicators to offer their best practices in connection with recruiting and retaining talented communicators. Their edited responses follow:

Keith Dailey

VP, Corporate Affairs

The Kroger Company

 

As a company that employs nearly half a million associates and is the world’s second-largest retailer by revenue, Kroger considers it critical to attract and retain strong communicators. Here are three ways we do it:

1. Tell our story.We’re open about our team’s dynamic transition from individual contributors to a truly integrated reputation shop. We are fanatical about our team’s singular role at Kroger, which is to enhance reputation by elevating our unique story.

2. Create a collaborative and inclusive atmosphere. We’ve intentionally knitted together internal and external communications teams – from a co-created communications plan to an open workspace to encourage collaboration.

3. Have a bold and clearly-articulated sense of purpose.Kroger’s purpose is to Feed the Human Spirit. We live our purpose in many ways, including Zero Hunger | Zero Waste, our social impact plan to end hunger in the places we call home and eliminate waste across our company by 2025.

Nearly every candidate points to Zero Hunger | Zero Waste and to Kroger’s purpose as reasons they want to join our team. This clarity of purpose and vision is making a huge difference in both attracting and retaining top talent.

Eileen Sheil

Executive Director

Corporate Communications

Cleveland Clinic

In an ever-changing media environment, I think it’s important to keep your team engaged by evolving and growing together. We encourage people to participate and bring their best ideas to the table, no matter how big or small. At Cleveland Clinic, we’re growing our library of news content on our newsroom website and have a focus on digital, mobile and measureable information. This effort engages and challenges the entire team, internally and externally, and allows us to attract new kinds of talent such as producers, graphic designers and writers with different skillsets.

Together, we are experimenting with new approaches and content, while evolving our strategies to amplify news coverage and enhance our storytelling. It has been a great source of pride not only within the communications team, but also to other parts of the company when we highlight the great work of our employees and their tremendous impact on the lives of patients.

When we are recruiting people to the team, we want to share what we’re doing, hire the best talent and forward-thinking skillsets to complement the work that we’re doing. This work has been innovative, challenging, fun and we learn a great deal from each other.

Jon Sullivan

Director of Corporate Communications

Aflac

During normal times attracting and retaining talent in the communications field is hard enough. With near full employment, it’s even tougher. Of course competitive compensation, advancement opportunities and benefits are essential, but it’s the intangibles that drive quality professionals to choose one job over another or to stay with the one they have.

By nature, communications and marketing professionals aren’t much for sitting still. They crave autonomy that enables them to creatively explore, work with the latest technology and demonstrate results. They want to be part of business solutions, a big part. To that end, I ensure that every member of my team is the visible leader of at least one major, high-profile project that they own from start to finish. This instills a feeling of purpose for the work they do, knowing that they will be noticed for their successes and that they are personally making a difference.

At Aflac, we also focus heavily on measuring results, so individuals have an authentic understanding of how the work they do fits into the company’s business goals overall. By doing so we reaffirm the value of their work, making every individual feel like they are part of the reason for the success of the company in which they invest their time and talents.

Emil Janssens

Head, Marketing & Communications

Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty

Boring, gray suits and dull...these are some of the words associated with the insurance industry, which is not exactly known for its dynamic and innovative image. Many colleagues, brokers and clients with long careers in the industry started out in insurance by accident, rather than making a conscious career move. Banks and the fast-paced image of Wall Street money often seem much more attractive. If you scratch the surface, though, you’ll find insurance actually is very exciting, has a huge societal role and its greatest assets are its people.

Hiring is a tricky process, of course, especially for insurers in the U.S., including Allianz. Globally, Allianz has a strong footprint, it’s ranked 49th in brand value, according to Interbrand and has several high-profile sponsorships/partnerships, including Formula 1, Allianz Arena in Munich, Allianz Field in Minnesota, Paralympics Games, Formula E and the Drone Racing League.

These help with brand awareness, which gets some of the right people to apply in the first place, followed by internal referrals, which often are spot-on, especially regarding the culture-fit.

In addition, brands should be using tactics such as social media, in particular LinkedIn and Twitter, to raise awareness. Social media is such a targeted approach; there is so much talent discussing wanting jobs and experience in particular industries on these channels.

So whom to hire? A generalist or specialist? As marketing and communications overlap in so many ways and levels, I think that it is a good thing to avoid limiting yourself to focus too much on one particular skill.

Allen Plummer

Head of Editorial & Creative Production

Participant Strategy & Development

Vanguard

For me, the ability to attract and retain talented communicators stems from growth, coaching, and development. Whether it’s a potential superstar who has a great career ahead of him or her, or a rock star who loves his/her current job and wants to be the best communicator in the industry, I believe the key to recruiting and keeping talent is having an exceptional culture.

I expect all my leaders to know their employees extremely well; what makes them tick, where they want to be in five years, and what matters to them. And just as we expect employees to grow and evolve, I expect leaders to support and develop their employees.

At a large company like ours, working environments differ from area to area. In my experience the most talented people want to work somewhere they can grow, evolve, and receive support. A corporate culture featuring growth, coaching and development may not be the correct fit for everyone in every situation, but it’s worked well throughout my career.

Evan Kraus

President, Managing Director of Operations

APCO Worldwide

As unemployment has decreased and the labor market has become increasingly frictionless, the demands on all employers have changed from providing a job to delivering a dynamic and evolving career opportunity.

Employees want to come to a place where they feel the company is as invested in their career evolution as they are, and are committed to providing a constant learning environment, clear and compelling career paths and enough flexibility to keep the job fresh and interesting and to support robust work-life integration.

At APCO, we have responded by launching career concentrations that allow employees to chart career paths at their own pace, supported by best-of-class training, mentorship, and work experiences.

Our entry-level employees are hired into a special program called APCO+ that helps them adapt to a professional setting, learn how to become good consultants, and ensures they are exposed to the full breadth of career opportunities available before they begin to choose their concentrations.

We have launched technology, like Wisetail, Zoom and Workplace, designed to foster a sense of community among staff scattered across the globe and to build authentic affinity.

And we are moving aggressively to embrace employee-friendly policies like extended and gender equal parental leave, more real-time performance management and growing flexibility around paid leave.

All this lives in support of a strong, family-like corporate culture and recently refreshed values that set out how we expect colleagues to support each other as one team.

These efforts are clearly working. Our voluntary turnover rates are down, our employee engagement scores are rising and we are seeing a growing number of job applicants for open positions. We are probably most proud of our extensive number of boomerang employees – those who chose to leave APCO to try something else, but returned due to the career opportunities, exciting work and strong culture we offer.

Lisa Moehlenkamp

Chief of Staff

FleishmanHillard

FleishmanHillard employees are driven by curiosity and they never settle. We recruit and retain those employees by embracing their entrepreneurial spirit and empowering them to chart their own career path.

We’ve rolled out Nourish Initiatives in the past couple years that offer more flexible work environments, additional professional development opportunities and put an emphasis on harnessing the power of our diverse perspectives and experiences of staff across the globe.

The agency develops and promotes talented individuals who represent a multitude of backgrounds, characteristics, interests and orientations and is committed to an inclusive work environment that fosters the rich diversity of our team.

Employees are challenged to act boldly, taking calculated risks to create and execute transformational work, which is core to our continued success and growth as a company. For us, it’s not about doing more, but doing what matters. This theme is carried from our client work to our FH4Inclusion program, our corporate volunteer and pro bono initiative that supports organizations around the world that advance the cause of social inclusion. Our employees want to make an impact; we provide the work, tools and environment to do it.

Deborah Hankin

Chief People Officer

W2O Group

There are several important pieces to ensuring we are attracting the very best. From the start, we aim to deliver a white-glove candidate experience where each person knows exactly where he/she is in the process and receives actionable feedback. To up our game, we conduct extensive interview skills training at every level of the company so everyone is on the same page as to whom we want to bring in and how to do it.

Once you’re here we offer an end-to-end employee experience, ensuring from the moment you become a candidate to the moment you join our alumni group, the W2O Group journey is as wonderful as it is to be a client of ours. That means a clear role from the get-go and a career trajectory to match so you know what to expect and what’s expected of you.

In addition, we offer numerous options for training and development, as well as opportunities to create something from nothing. You can nurture your inner entrepreneur and have real agency to make things happen regardless of your level.

Finally, we have programs like Fourth Trimester, where we have executive coaches for people coming back from paternity leave to help ease the transition.

Chas Withers

CEO

Dix & Eaton

Great talent is always in demand. We know we have to be competitive and differentiated to attract and keep the best and brightest. Some things remain constant as key factors that stand out for our people: Access to interesting and fulfilling work, a collaborative and engaging culture, and, of course, excellent compensation, reward and recognition for a job well done. But, in many regards, those elements have become table stakes.

Our emerging talent-and the candidates we seek-also are looking for: a well-considered balance in their personal/professional lives; direct guidance and feedback that can help them grow; diversity in people and perspective; and specific clarity on what tomorrow can bring for them.

They want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and to have colleagues who share their mindset and perspective. As a component of that, they also want to know their voice is heard, and someone cares about them as an individual and as a practitioner.

Last, we all know our industry is changing at a breakneck pace and those stars who have joined us also want to see velocity and agility in our capacity to embrace and anticipate new technologies and new digital norms - and to then be able to show the way on those fronts to our clients and partners.

Amy Lyons

Managing Partner

SHIFT Communications, Inc.

At SHIFT, attracting and recruiting talent starts with our core values–being connected, honorable, creative, smart, positive, dedicated and fearless guides everything we do and the decisions we make.

This emphasis on culture begins well ahead of an employee being hired, with potential candidates asked a series of questions during the interview process to help determine if they have what it takes to be SHIFTers. We believe adhering to these values during the vetting process will allow us to engage and retain employees longer and keep us honest in holding ourselves to a higher standard.

With these values as our guide, retention becomes about adherence to the values and building programs and incentives that honor them. From a robust performance management process that ensures employees get regular and consistent feedback on their performance and growth track, to a strong commitment to open communication with senior management through an annual State of SHIFT presentation and all-firm updates, we believe communication is vital to retaining talent at every level.

Of course, we also recognize employees today value flexibility and additional incentives that support work-life balance. Perks like summer Fridays, employee referral bonuses, volunteer and voting time off, cultural reimbursements, professional development and networking opportunities and office exchanges all come together to provide our employees with the time, commitment and environment they need to thrive.

 

Kate Richmond

Chief Talent Officer

WE Communications

Attracting and retaining talent starts with being true with who we are, amplifying strengths, addressing shortcomings and telling a genuine story. It is a two-way exchange, built on mutual understanding and transparency about what employees and the company are bringing to the table. Our approach is grounded in three core principles:

Focus on the whole person. We look for people who can do four things well: do inspiring work; learn, we mean really learn; work hard and live life; and give generously. We empower our employees to select the combination of programs and benefits that best fit their needs and interests, and we strive to surprise and experiment with new offerings. We’ve recently completed our second Global Pro Bono program where global colleagues take a month off to provide communications services to non-profits in Africa.

Lead with People, Purpose and Profit in equal measure.Principle, passion and having the freedom to do what’s right for our people over what’s most profitable all shape the business and culture of WE. We lean on our independence to make decisions around how we work and who we work with, which is important to our employees and the bottom line.

Nurture the Culture.Career and culture go hand in hand. Values guide decisions, expectations and actions. Employee retention is shaped by how they experience our values every day—from our leaders and from each other.

Brian Kelley

VP

Public Relations/Employee Experience

Sage Communications

Employees don’t leave companies, they leave people. Culture and engagement set a company apart in attracting and retaining talent.

At Sage, it is a constant focus to ensure we are creating an atmosphere of development, collaboration, and transparency. We do this in a number of ways:

Development:Team members are reimbursed for industry events or professional development workshops. We also have a thriving Sage University comprised of professional development classes spanning media relations to networking. This year, we partnered with an accredited college to offer courses at 50% off the tuition rate for Sage employees.

Mentorship: Team members can join Sage’s mentorship program, which pairs younger staff with experienced executives. Extraordinarily successful, this has resulted in many strong relationships that have increased our retention rate.

Employee Engagement:From national sundae day to bring your dog to work day to team lunches, we are never short of celebrations. We also have a monthly recognition program that awards employees for great accomplishments. These activities drive team bonding, inspire collaboration and increase employee satisfaction.

Communication: As a manager, it is my responsibility to ensure each member of my team has a healthy work-life balance and feels like there always is a way at Sage to achieve his/her goals. When an employee experiences burnout or no longer sees a career trajectory is when they begin considering other options. Accordingly, each of my team knows my door always is open and they can speak honestly with me without fear of retaliation or judgment. These one-on-one relationships help meet employee expectations, increase retention and plan for the future of my team.

Courtney Beasley

Marketing Director

Walker Sands Communications

The marketing job market is comprised of millennials striving to make an impact with a tangible influence on business growth. Whether their function is within brand, demand or anything in between, marketers in support roles want consistent challenge and opportunity for ownership that can lead to positive change and progress.

Managers can keep marketers happy by trusting them, even before that trust is formally built. There is never a shortage of work to complete within a small-but-mighty marketing team, and when you need all hands on deck to keep operations running smoothly, it’s beneficial to give employees as much ownership as possible. Marketing is a competitive space with high turnover, but if you build a workplace that makes employees feel respected, trusted and part of a bigger initiative, they won’t want to take their skills elsewhere.

Flexibility has also become increasingly important for retention. Employees want a good work-life balance, collaborative relationships with their peers and superiors, and opportunities to explore the work that excites them. Being an all-hands department allows flexibility within roles and titles.

Build your team by encouraging employees to explore their roles and find what most piques their interest. By allowing growing marketers to explore what they’re good at, their curiosity will remain consistent and their motivation will be less likely to diminish. Over time, marketers will develop skills and become invaluable experts in niche areas of your business, making your team an impactful unit.

Margenett Moore-Roberts

Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer

Golin

Golin’s success is tied directly to our ability to attract and retain talented and brave communications professionals. We know we must evolve our talent base to meet new demands. Our goal is to make Golin a destination employer for the most talented, diverse, and creative marketing services professionals.

To attract new talent, we are evaluating the entire employee lifecycle to identify opportunities to improve the employee experience across hiring, on-boarding, development and career-progression practices. We also are partnering with colleges and universities to influence curriculum, establish early relationships with emerging talent and tap into alumni networks to engage entry-, mid-, and senior-level talent.

To retain talent, we are building a culture that is radically inclusive, aggressively equitable and fiercely diverse. We are investing in inclusive teams and leadership competencies as well as targeted career development/progression strategies to help ensure all Goliners experience a sense of value and belonging for their contributions.

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