Building Bridges: Cultivating Inclusive Cultures and Retaining Talent
I had the privilege of presenting at the 2024 URx conference in Las Vegas. Retention has been a hot topic across most industries and I was thrilled to provide perspective from my experiences with clients. Some highlights covered and takeaways from the workshop:
Opportunity Cost of work - The “bridge” concept was used to build an image of the journey talent is taking, particularly post-pandemic. Organizations have made pledges, commitments, even mandates as to how they are going to focus on recruitment and retention of underrepresented populations that they employ. We are currently in year 4 since this window of initial call to action. We used this timeline to center the mindset of talent right now. Did my choice to go someone else pay off? If I’m still where I am today, is it worth it? Everyone has an opportunity cost at work. Underrepresented talent however, faces unique challenges that organizations have an opportunity to work to solve for. I believe companies that realize potential here will differentiate their brand as an employer of choice longer term than those who fear and ignore this reality at hand.
University Recruitment is as competitive as ever - If you’ve ever heard a leader communicate that we should be solving our diversity representation issues through university recruitment, you are not alone! I led an activity that provided URx with a 1-page playbook on how to maximize the bridge between acquiring and retaining talent. This included specific, actionable tactics to be used with UR’s most common stakeholders - talent managers, L&D, Business Human Resources, amongst others.
Early Career Talent is in good hands - As no surprise to me, URx is a premier community for Univeristy Relations and Higher Education professionals to network and collaborate for the greater good of the students and early career talent that our organizations seek to both employ and develop. I personally have been fortunate to operate in many roles that URx community currently occupies, and am very grateful for the opportunity to share some of my experiences to support those who are facing similar challenges I have.
Interested in seeing the full workshop? Click here to create an acount to view our work together.
URx is a fantastic community for anyone seeking support and development for themselves or their talent teams. Check them out here!
