Recruitment is no longer about filling a vacancy. In today’s modern climate, it is about getting the right fit for both the candidate and employer, building a long-term relationship.
Have you ever started a job and just known it wasn’t for you on day one? Arriving at work, you may have been given little in the way of introductions, and with no welcome, found yourself with little guidance on the task at hand. People you worked alongside may have seemed stressed, overworked and a revolving door of staff may have made it hard to make friends. Jobs like this inevitably mean a quick change, costing all the stakeholders involved. Now, recruitment is changing that, matching candidates to jobs who will be retained in the right positions.
How Can a Retention Partner Help My Business?
A traditional recruitment agency provides a service in which they vet candidates and fill job roles. Once complete, the process is often done and handed over to the company that hired them. Yet recruitment agencies have begun to look at long-term hires, given the cost and time onboarding takes. Thus, retention partners have stepped up to go beyond this. They specialize in finding long-term solutions and even support the onboarding process. Essentially, this means better value for the recruiter.
With UK job postings 27% below pre-pandemic levels, recruiters are shifting focus. They are no longer just finding talent; they are advising clients on how to use performance data to keep the talent they have. Doing this effectively can take place in different ways. Technology is assisting, and the use of performance management software, such as Factorial, is one way to do it right. This provides an all-in-one solution for performance reviews, automating cycles and allowing for enhanced insights, employee development and informed decisions.
All of this gives a framework for onboarding. The candidate does not simply sign the papers and arrive at the company. Instead, the retention partner helps them conduct check-ins in the first six to 12 months, ensuring any issues are handled early to increase the chances of a person staying in the role. With a system in place like Factorial, the recruiter or new company can provide continuous feedback, assigning and managing goals.
What High Staff Turnover Costs a Company
The costs of high staff turnover in a company are numerous. Each time an employee leaves a company, productivity is disrupted. A gap appears, and even when new hires are brought in, there is a period of adjustment. Colleagues take on more of the workload and the ever-present threat of burnout increases. Eventually, a revolving door policy deteriorates staff morale and company culture.
All of these place a huge financial strain on your organisation. Estimates are that replacing a single member of staff can cost UK businesses between £25,000 and £30,000, when recruitment, training and lost productivity are factored in. If you are doing this multiple times a year, it cuts into your margins.
Eventually, this damages a brand and reputation. Top talent will stay away as a reputation develops for harbouring a toxic workplace. Recruitment becomes more challenging and this can even impact customers as they notice staff are different each time they interact with a company. Even trust within the organization can vanish as key team members move on.
How Retention as a Service Works
For many recruitment companies, the success of this means that models of payment have also changed. They no longer receive a one-off fee for filling a role. Payments can be tied to different milestones in the employee journey, or monthly retainers may be paid to the agency.
When it comes to the onboarding process and settlement journey, systems like Factorial are really essential. Independent check-ins can help nip any issues regarding dissatisfaction in the bud. By using the 360-degree feedback reviews, including employees, managers and peers, clear pathways can also be forged for career progression and the alignment of goals, not just for the individual, but for the whole organization.
Should I Be Using AI in the Recruitment Process?
It seems that AI has crept into every facet of our personal and working lives, with recruitment being no different. The AI recruitment market is expected to grow to $1289.13 million by 2035 with a 6.92% growth rate. From huge AI decision-making software packages to the assistance in systems like Factorial, AI is assisting in every step of the process.
Around 67% of recruiters in a 2025 survey believed that AI would be a key trend in 2025, yet of them, 4 in 10 believed it made the process impersonal. A quarter of them also believed that algorithmic bias led to unfair hiring decisions, which have real-world legal ramifications. This is down to what has been coined ‘the black box’ in which recruiters see the information going in, and the result, but have very little information about how the AI came to that decision.
The New York Times recently reported on an action against Eightfold AI, which operates employment screening software. It does this by trawling LinkedIn, creating a dataset of jobs, sectors and demographics based on geography, which it uses in marketing. This is then used to score applications on a scale between one and five, though those applying never know what their score is or how the conclusion was made.
The plaintiffs have argued that this should be subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, as it is very much like the rule used to oversee credit scores. This safeguards consumers against information collected by consumer credit bureaus. How much data the AI also has and stores on an individual, is also unknown.
Smart Mobility and the Job Sector
Internal pressures are not the only reason staff members across the UK are getting itchy feet. The whole concept of labour has changed. After the great resignation following the pandemic, holding onto staff became paramount. This has now moved on to the stage of smart mobility, in which people are making deliberate career and company moves that benefit them. People no longer feel locked into a job if they believe employers don’t value them or their time.
Several reasons exist for this; one is that financial confidence is much better. Around 67% of Gen Z feel confident living within their means, with people seemingly more concerned about their personal goals than salary alone. Expectations for companies now involve having a level of clarity, both with career progression and well-being. Added to this is that hybrid working has now become the norm as opposed to an addition.
How Employers Can Assist in Retention
As the loyalty of someone joining a company can no longer be guaranteed by the size of their paycheck alone, companies must begin to change their mindset. The training, upskilling and progression of candidates have now become essential. This is where a quality performance management software package like Factorial comes into its own, allowing employee ambitions to be discussed and matched to internal opportunities.
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Another is to ensure that the hiring process is as clear and forthright as possible. If not, strong candidates will go elsewhere or see it as a sign of a company that does not have its house in order. This does not just include doing away with multiple interview stages.
Ghosting is a very real situation in modern job application processes, in which people never hear back from an application. A poll by New People Management found that 92% of people had been ghosted by a company. A simple yes or no shows that your organization has the value of common decency, even if it is an automated reply telling people you are not pursuing their application.
A further poll by Gallup recently found that 42% of employees who left their jobs in the last year believed a manager or company could have done something to stop them. Around 45% of these voluntary leaders reported that no managers or leaders discussed job satisfaction with them, nor their performance or future.
Approaching Retention as Opposed to Recruitment
This approach is daunting. You suddenly find yourself a worker down, deadlines are mounting up, and you need a body to fill that gap. Yet the wrong one can cost far more than a missed deadline, often to the tune of around £25,000 upwards. Is this something you can afford?
Recruitment companies that focus on retention save you money in the long term. However, they will only do so if you have the systems and workplace culture in place to retain someone in the first place. If you have a revolving door, overworked staff and no career progression, then retention partners will do little. Making internal changes and working alongside them is the real key.
From here, you will have a solid workforce in place. They will get to know each other, begin to build your positive company culture and increase productivity. With this sound foundation, you can gradually grow and spot opportunities together instead of firefighting staff turnover-related issues.
