How to Attract and Retain Top Project Talent in 2022

Attracting top project talent is a challenge at the best of times. 

Heading into a post-pandemic world, it’s even more challenging with employees re-evaluating their priorities. Organisations need to position themselves as flexible and adaptable to employee needs. But the work doesn’t stop there. Once you have successfully attracted top talent to your organisation, it’s just as important to know how to retain them.

We have listed ways to help your organisation attract and retain top project management talent.

Internal Training Programs

The biggest asset of any organisation is its employees. Successful organisations know how important it is to invest in talent. Finding and recruiting new talent is a lengthy and expensive process. By training and upskilling your current employees, you’re making an important investment in the future of your business.

An excellent way to start investing in talent is to set up internal training programs. This attracts top-tier talent to your organisation and helps retain employees.

Before introducing internal training programs, you need to do the following: 

●      Evaluate the needs of employees and how they align with your organisation: Employers often introduce internal training programs before evaluating and identifying the skills gap within their organisation. 

●      Understand the skills that are lacking and the programs that can help upskill your talent: Asking the right questions helps your organisation evaluate who needs training and what that training is.

It’s important to understand that internal training programs should not always be focused primarily on your organisation’s needs. Training opportunities for personal growth are also important, even if the skills aren’t directly transferable to an employee’s role. 

This shows employees that your organisation is not only focused on productivity but also prioritises personal growth. This will encourage your top talent to stick with your organisation when recruitment agencies are looking to headhunt them.

Culture Reviews

To retain the best project management talent, you should conduct culture reviews periodically. Culture reviews can help you determine if employees are aligned with your organisation's goals, mission, and values.

A culture review encourages collaboration to help improve, reset, and nurture working relationships. They are an effective way of strengthening your project management team.

But before introducing culture reviews, ensure that your review process fits the purpose. The information obtained from culture reviews aims to provide insights into your employees' strengths and weaknesses and highlight areas for improvement.  

You can conduct culture reviews through inclusion surveys, focus groups, internal communications, report preparation, leader training, value and policy reviews, etc.

Seek Candidates with Project-Specific Certifications

Candidates with project-specific certifications have a higher probability of staying in your organisation than candidates who don’t. 

Individuals with professional certifications are:

●      Well-trained. 

●      Advance faster in their careers.

●      Know the value of working with an organisation that looks after their best interests.

Offer Competitive Compensations

Top project management talent knows their value and expects their salary to reflect their knowledge and experience. And with a growing need for top talent, compensation is an important consideration to potential employees. 

According to Payscale, the average salary of a project management professional is AU$127,000, which is expected to increase by at least 3%-5% in the next few years. As a result, offering a high starting salary is a great way to attract top talent to your organisation. 

Consider offering additional incentives to position yourself apart from other organisations and retain your top talent. Look at offering extras such as performance-based bonuses, paid holiday allowances, or medical insurance.  

Great Leadership

In any business setting, outstanding leadership is seen as a competitive advantage that can determine employee longevity. Not only does great leadership attract top talent, but it also helps to retain them.

One of the main reasons top employees leave an organisation is bad leadership. As a leader, by valuing your employees, you make it harder for them to leave your organisation. 

Create a work culture that is fun, rewarding, and inclusive: top talents prefer to work where they feel valued and prioritised. 

Don’t Treat all Talent Equally

As much as we’ve all been taught to treat people the same, this approach doesn’t always work in today’s workplace. 

Don’t treat your top talents the same way you treat upcoming ones or low-performers. Invest in the low-performers too and try to make them perform better. None of your employees’ growth should be stagnant. 

Conclusion

The challenge to attract and retain top talent has increased significantly since the beginning of COVID-19 and continues to worsen as we head into a post-pandemic world. This highlights the need for organisations to find solutions they can implement to make them stand out to potential employees.  

We can help your organisation stand out to top project talent. At MetaPM, we deliver on-site and virtual project management certification training for organisations of all sizes throughout Australia. This training helps upskill and retain your employees while also providing them with the necessary skills to get the job done.

We can help you get started. Contact us at MetaPM today.