However, over the years, our HR Consulting Services team has noticed that these discussions often revolve around the same question: How can we find better employees? Yet another question deserves just as much attention, even if it can be more difficult to ask: How can we become a better employer?
The distinction matters. It is often easier to explain our challenges by pointing to labour market conditions, candidates’ expectations, or the attitudes of younger generations than to question some of our own management practices. Of course, recruitment challenges are real, and many organizations face significant constraints. But does the labour market always explain everything?
The labour market has changed, but have our practices kept up?
For many years, employers had greater flexibility and bargaining power. Employees often stayed with the same organization for several years, job stability was a major priority, and career opportunities were sometimes more limited.
Today, expectations have evolved. Employees value compensation, but they also place importance on the quality of their work environment, their relationship with their manager, professional development opportunities, and the recognition they receive. They want to understand how they contribute and feel that their work has value.
Yet some organizations continue to approach recruitment and retention challenges with the same mindset they had fifteen or twenty years ago. When applications are scarce, we blame labour shortages. When employees leave, we question their loyalty. When engagement declines, we point to a lack of commitment.
Sometimes, these explanations are justified. But they should not prevent us from asking a fundamental question: What if part of the solution could also be found within our own organization?
Before looking elsewhere, let’s look within
Throughout its consulting assignments, our HR Consulting Services team has had the opportunity to speak with many business leaders facing recruitment challenges. The team is thinking particularly of organizations that repeatedly post job openings, invest in different talent attraction strategies, and still find that the results fall short of expectations.
In these situations, discussions naturally focus on candidates, compensation, and competition. But when we take the conversation a little further, other questions begin to emerge. How do we welcome and integrate new employees? How much importance do we place on skills development? Do managers genuinely take the time to communicate with their teams? Do employees understand what is expected of them and what opportunities are available?
These questions may seem simple, but the answers can be revealing. We begin to realize that recruitment challenges are not always disconnected from what is happening internally. An organization that struggles to retain employees will constantly have to restart its recruitment efforts, regardless of how effective its talent attraction strategies may be.
Your employees are your best ambassadors… or your biggest critics
We hear a great deal about employer branding. Organizations invest in their image, recruitment campaigns, social media presence, and reputation. These initiatives can certainly help attract candidates’ attention.
However, we should never forget that an employer brand is not built solely on what an organization claims to be. It is shaped primarily by what employees experience every day.
Employees talk about their jobs, their managers, the atmosphere within their teams, and how they are treated. They share their experiences with family, friends, former colleagues, and sometimes even potential candidates. And quite often, these conversations carry far more weight than an advertising campaign.
An employee who feels respected, recognized, and supported naturally becomes an ambassador for the organization. Conversely, when the actual employee experience does not match the promises made during recruitment, the employer’s reputation can quickly suffer. An organization can invest significant amounts in attracting talent, but if the internal experience fails to meet expectations, those investments may deliver limited results.
Retention begins long before an employee resigns
When an employee announces their departure, many managers immediately try to understand what motivated the decision. Was it a better salary offer? A career advancement opportunity? A change in career direction? These are legitimate questions, but sometimes they come a little too late.
Experience has taught our HR Consulting Services team that a resignation is rarely the result of a single event. More often, it stems from an accumulation of situations that, taken individually, may seem insignificant. A lack of recognition, unclear expectations, a difficult relationship with a manager, the feeling of no longer progressing, or simply the impression of not being heard.
These frustrations generally do not develop overnight. They build gradually, sometimes over several months, without necessarily being openly expressed.
That is why our HR Consulting Services team believes organizations would benefit from investing as much energy in understanding why employees stay as they do in understanding why they leave. Regular conversations, active listening, and strong management relationships can often help identify issues long before they become serious problems.
After all, retaining a good employee should not begin the day they hand in their resignation.
Being a good employer doesn’t mean being perfect
When we talk about employers of choice, many business leaders immediately think of large organizations with substantial budgets, comprehensive benefits programs, and considerable resources to attract talent.
Yet over the years, our HR Consulting Services team has encountered many small and medium-sized businesses that do an outstanding job of engaging and retaining their employees without necessarily offering the most competitive employment conditions in the market.
Their strength often lies in much more accessible practices: managers who are present and available, transparent communication, genuine recognition, development opportunities, and, above all, an environment where employees feel valued.
This does not mean that compensation and working conditions are secondary. They remain essential and must be competitive. However, they are not always enough to create a lasting sense of belonging.
Being a good employer does not mean meeting every expectation or keeping everyone satisfied at all times. Rather, it means being able to recognize your strengths, identify your weaknesses, and demonstrate a genuine commitment to continuously improving your practices. And that commitment must be reflected in concrete actions, not just good intentions.
What if we changed the way we think about recruitment?
Through our work at Bedard Resources, we regularly support organizations looking to improve their management practices, strengthen employee engagement, and address recruitment and retention challenges. One thing frequently comes up in our discussions: the most effective solutions are not necessarily the most complex or expensive. They often begin with a better understanding of what employees actually experience.
Our HR Consulting Services team remains convinced that an organization wishing to attract and retain good employees must also be willing to question its own practices. Not because it is necessarily doing things wrong, but because expectations evolve, teams change, and management practices must evolve along with them.
We devote considerable time to assessing the skills, attitudes, and potential of the candidates we want to hire. And rightly so. But do we spend just as much time evaluating what our organization genuinely has to offer them?
Ultimately, before asking why good employees are not joining our organization or why they are leaving, perhaps we should start by asking ourselves what would truly make them want to work for us… and, more importantly, what would make them want to stay.
To learn more about our services and the support we offer in recruitment, employee retention, engagement, and human resources management, we invite you to contact Stéphane Pépin, Vice President – Human Resources and Consulting services at Bedard Resources at spepin@bedardressources.com .
