How to source and keep the best staff

Beatrice Bartlay

With competition for talented staff extremely intense, employers need to be able to source and keep the best employees. By Beatrice Bartlay

With unemployment slowly but surely declining and organisations looking at how to expand their businesses, recruitment is on the up and companies are vying for the best talent to help them achieve their ambitious plans. But sourcing and attracting the best staff is no mean feat and one that cannot be taken too lightly.

The most important element of a successful and profitable business is the people. The people make a brand, the people are the ones delivering excellent customer service, and it’s the people making sure that customers get exactly what they pay for. Needless to say that sourcing the right people has historically been a challenge for every business, and it never gets any easier.

With this in mind, there are a number of top tips for sourcing the best staff. 

1. Ask the experts

If your business is within a niche industry, there are specialist suppliers of staffing that can manage the advertising, sourcing, interviewing and selection as part of the service. And of course, if the agency is unsuccessful, there is no fee. Take a view of what is more beneficial for your business. This is particularly useful to consider when your company is growing rapidly, so as to alleviate pressure on the HR department if you have one.

2. Understand exactly what you need more staff for

By better understanding and analysing your business forecasts, plans – and of course goals and objectives – you should be able to effectively pinpoint whether your business needs full-time positions filled, or simply a temporary staffing solution. Temporary staff can be cost effective during seasonal swings for certain industries, including retail, manufacturing, and utilities. 

3. Test their performance in a real-life situation

Although putting individuals on the spot in an interview situation is something nobody wants to do, it is perhaps obvious and extremely important that you test the competency of an individual before hiring them. Figure out what key tasks they will be undertaking in their day-to-day processes, and set them a realistic task in a timed and controlled environment, so you can see how they are likely to perform.

4. Ensure that they are a cultural fit

Ensure that the candidate is both a fit in terms of skills, as well as (and this is very important) culturally. As an employer, you need to understand exactly what is important to you and your business in terms of what the individual can deliver in terms of value, and if their personality ‘suits’ both your company image and the team already in place.

5. Don’t disregard succession planning

As an employer looking to fulfil a role – whether newly created or recently vacated – it is critical that you look within your existing team or teams. Employee development and promotion from within is a fantastic motivator and demonstrates the commitment of your company to your workforce’s individual career goals and future plans.

6. Don’t let the good ones get away


The team is core to a business’s success and it is not just sourcing staff, which can be a challenge, but retaining them too. From my experience, the insight is quite simple – your team leaders must be the best example to learn from; must have an ability to inspire the team; be supportive, polite, and retain a sense of humour too.

Beatrice Bartlay is managing director of 2B Interface