How prioritising employee wellbeing can help attract and retain talent

Companies can do more than offer higher wages to attract and retain talent. The HR Leader spoke with Sharp & Carter partner Niall O’Rourke about the importance of prioritising the health and wellbeing of employees and how it can help with attraction and retention.

Mr O’Rourke explained: “Organisations talk about health and wellbeing and how important it is. I think no matter who you are or what industry you sit within, if that's not a focus area now, you're definitely going to struggle to attract, and also probably more importantly, retain staff.”

“At Sharp & Carter, we definitely practice what we preach in that space. Our whole mindset here is we can pay people all the money you want in the world, but if they're not happy, both physically, mentally in their personal life, they're not going to be happy coming to work,” he said.

Mr O’Rourke notes that keeping employees happy won’t just improve their attitude but can also ensure they put in their best effort at work, improving productivity.

“If people aren't happy coming into work, how are they going to be successful and how are they going to be willing to work hard? More importantly, do the right things for our customers,” he said.

Dedicating a role that prioritises and maintains employee satisfaction may be a worthwhile addition to your workforce: “Each [Sharp & Carter] office across Australia has someone who is a health and wellbeing champion. Then we've got one of our founding partners, Christian Keogh, as well. Christian's job nationally, is he looks after the wellbeing of over 135 people across Australia,” Mr O’Rourke said.

“The value-add that we have here when our people are happy in what they do every day, you actually can't put a price tag on it.”

Mr O’Rourke says that maintaining employee happiness should begin immediately in the employee lifecycle. Getting it right from the start can help promote a healthy work environment.

“When we hire people, we say to people: ‘You've got six to 12 months of no expectations. You're not going to have a revenue target over your head. Your job is to just get settled into the organisation, get settled into your job and learn.”

He continued: “You’ve just got to be a human sponge and soak it all up. Our mindset is if we put revenue targets on people's head in their first couple of months, it's going to add unnecessary pressure. Then we all know what happens when you've got unnecessary pressure, you've got unhappy people.”

Mr O’Rourke added: “My tip to customers is don't worry about what external is doing on that side of things. Focus on your own backyard first, which is looking after your staff that you've got. Because if they're happy, that will then flow onto their customers. That will then flow into market, that it's a great organisation to work in.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full conversation with Niall O’Rourke is below.