Recruitment, retention and remote work: 10 inspiring quotes

At a recent HR Leaders Workshop in partnership with Safeguard Global, industry leaders gathered from across the globe to discuss beyond “the future of work” and how to best position your organization for a fast-approaching 2023.

The two panels are available for you to watch, but here are a few notable quotes that really captivated us on various topics from hiring and recruitment to talent development and retention.

“The use of platforms like LinkedIn shot through the roof to try and get in front of these candidates. I saw hiring managers doing selfie videos and posting them on LinkedIn. Companies had to become really innovative to compete. You saw HR departments hiring marketers into the HR team, which they never really had before.” –Chris Rainey, CEO & Co-Founder at HR Leaders

“If you are looking for top talent, people need to be treated with a certain degree of personalization. [At Safeguard Global], we started with understanding the candidate from day one. The hiring manager is actually reading their resume before the candidate has their first contact with us. We then read their GitHub pages or anything that we could get our hands on about how they've worked online. Some of the people that we are working with are PhDs, and we want to have read a little bit about what kind of publications they've put out. And then when you're first introducing yourselves to them, it's not a conversation like, ‘tell me about your background.’ It's, ‘I've read about you, and I find this thing that you've done so fascinating. Tell me a little bit about that.’” –Duri Chitayat, Chief Technology Officer at Safeguard Global

“A lot of research now shows that it's the people 50+ who want to force people back to the offices. The mindset shift needs to come from my generation to say that it's okay to work remotely 100% remotely, if necessary. It's up to us to make us more attractive for the talent, so we can make them as productive as possible.” –Anna Mindelöf, Chief People Officer at Fiskars Group

“When you're in the office, you have those impromptu conversations that just come out of nowhere. That in-person experience is valuable, especially for the managers and the more junior or early career people for their mentoring purposes. It's another way to connect with somebody when you have a human being, a three-dimensional person versus the screen. But to really connect with your coworkers, to go have lunch. You have that community. You're bonding. You're connecting. The sooner people can connect, the better retention they'll have. ” –Nina Kittlitz, Vice President, Senior Talent Acquisition at First Citizens Bank

“If you're going from an organization that is used to hiring people within 50 miles of their headquarters to hiring people all across the world, you're going to get different types of people. People are different in different places. How do you look at culture fit? How do you look at the kind of communication skills that people are going to have coming in, and what you'd expect of them? How do you set expectations about how people behave with one another? Building an organization that respects those differences and tries to treat them as an add—something that helps your organization—as opposed to a negative, something that you want to kind of fit everybody in a particular box. That's something that all organizations struggle with right now. ” –Duri Chitayat, Chief Technology Officer at Safeguard Global

“Mattering matters, right? If you can get the feeling that the company and HR, the line managers actually do care about you as a person, that will help you to retain people—and the right people—in the organization. The culture add is super important. The culture fit is less important if you want to develop the company, but everyone needs to feel that they belong to the organization.” –Anna Mindelöf, Chief People Officer at Fiskars Group

“The old style checklist is: Day 1, do you have your computer? This is what your job is. This is how we communicate. This is how I do my one-on-ones. Flip it around and say, what does the candidate need? Tell me how you like to communicate. How do you best receive feedback? How do you best receive direction? From day one, start building that relationship in a way that is productive for that new joiner that works for them. That makes them feel connected to you. HR is still going to help. But in the end, this isn't a checklist world anymore. This is about looking at things through the candidate's point of view so that we can really engage them and we can build the engagement that lasts throughout their tenure with us.” –Katherine Loranger, Chief People Officer at Safeguard Global

“Everything changed. The company is no longer the one recruiting and selecting. We are being recruited and selected.” –Carla Calisto, Chief People Officer at WPP

“People like the company. They want to stay, but it's very clear that if they don't feel that they've got an opportunity for growth—a path forward—they're going to leave. They're going to go someplace else to get that. And that's what we're trying to get in front of.” –Cari Bohley, Vice President Talent Management at Peraton

“I think one of the biggest challenges that HR has right now is helping managers realize how important their people leadership skills are. The biggest obstacle we run into is: I had a client call. I had a sale I had to make. All those things that are my real job. If something's going to give, it's probably how they lead and manage their people. The best managers know that that's not how they're successful—that if they really want to be successful, they have to invest.” –Katherine Loranger, Chief People Officer at Safeguard Global

The biggest takeaway from these discussions is that the future of work is ever-changing and evolving—and how your company approaches recruitment and retention should also continue to evolve into 2023 and beyond.