9 Ways to Become an Employer of Choice in 2023

To attract the best talent in the life science industry, you need to ensure that you’re not only providing people with a job that will pay the bills, but also a unique company culture and a superior employee experience. In other words, you need to position your organisation as an employer of choice.

To attract top talent, you need to present your organisation as a top employer, showing jobseekers exactly what they will gain through working for you beyond a salary.

This article looks at 9 things you can do to help you become an employer of choice in 2023, highlighting some of the most important things life science jobseekers will be looking for this year.

Track Your Employee Retention

100% employee satisfaction is something most organisations won’t achieve. Especially if you have hundreds or thousands of employees, it’s almost impossible to create a working environment that each one of your hires will love. Therefore, there’s always an opportunity to learn about what your employees do and don’t like about working for your organisation, understanding what drives them to leave and to say.

Continuously track your employee retention, using exit interviews to identify the key issues within your organisation and understand how these are affecting the employee experience. You might find that some of the reasons employees leave are down to things you can’t change (e.g., if an employee is retiring), but there will likely always be people who leave due to things that could have been prevented. Use this insight to build on your offering as an employer.

Be Honest About Company Culture and Role Expectations

Whist your aim might be to attract the best talent in the life science industry, you need to ensure you’re attracting the right kind of people to your organisation. If the people you hire won’t thrive in the working environment you offer, they’ll likely become unhappy and unproductive employees, which won’t help you position your organisation as a desirable place to work.

When advertising your roles, be clear about requirements and expectations, making sure you’re not overselling a role to make a quick hire. When you’re interviewing candidates, really think about whether you’re right for them as well as if they’re right for you.

Create a Culture of Open Communication

Create a culture where feedback – both positive and negative – isn’t just welcomed but encouraged. Don’t just rely on annual performance reviews or exit interviews to understand what is and isn’t working. One example of something you could do is to conduct stay interviews with your employees, giving you the opportunity to stop smaller issues becoming long-term problems, and giving your employees an open forum to raise concerns and drive change.

Turn Your Employees into Advocates

Candidates trust existing employees three times more than the company when it comes to learning what the company is like as an employer. You can say what you like about how amazing your organisation is, but it’s your employees who can really advocate for you. Things you can do to turn employees into advocates include:

• Planning an onboarding programme that reiterates the company’s mission and values
• Implementing an employee referral scheme
• Including them in your social media and website content, and encouraging them to share this content
• Encourage both current and previous employees to leave reviews on sites like Glassdoor, ensuring to regularly check and respond to these
• Provide employees with company merchandise

Be Clear About Opportunities for Career Development

From the first interview you hold with candidates, be clear about the different opportunities for development available at your organisation. Provide examples of different career paths employees have taken as well as an idea of the paths they could follow. Show candidates the types of skills they could develop in the future and offer them autonomy over their learning and development.

Having an internal mobility strategy in place can be a great way of encouraging employees to move around within your organisation, rather than outside of it.

Be Flexible and Prioritise Work-Life Balance

It goes without saying that flexible working is here to stay, with this benefit being something that most jobseekers are now expecting from future employers. In the UK, plans have been laid out by the government to make flexible working the default, starting with allowing workers to request flexible working on day one of employment, rather than after the previous 26-week qualifying period.  

57% of jobseekers say a poor work-life balance is a dealbreaker when considering a new job. To become an employer of choice in 2023, helping your employees to fit their work around their lives rather than their lives around their work will be essential.

Support Employees Through the Cost-of-Living Crisis

The current cost-of-living crisis will be one of the biggest challenges many of your employees will be faced with in 2023. Here are 11 ways you can support your employees during this difficult time, from offering pay increases and bonuses in line with inflation to giving your employees more flexibility and time to give back.

Connect Your Employees

If you’ve got staff working remotely either full or part time, you need to ensure you’re keeping those employees connected to the rest of your team, ensuring they stay engaged and that they feel included. Make sure that the company culture you promote is consistent regardless of whether people are working on-site, remotely, or a mix of the two.

Look After Employee Wellbeing

Two thirds of therapists say that cost of living concerns are causing a decline in people’s mental health, with 49% reporting that people are cutting back on activities that benefit their mental health in order to afford their household bills. Therefore it’s more important than ever to support your workers with their mental wellbeing in 2023. You can support workers by:

• Ensuring all workers stay connected to one another
• Provide access to mental wellbeing workshops, apps, and helplines
• Support physical exercise through gym discounts, cycle to work schemes, fitness competitions, etc.
• Open up conversations around mental health in the workplace
• Look out for signs of burnout and ensure employees can cope with their workload

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