A Recruiter’s Stress Reduction Program

Written By Peter Weddle, Weddles  

Stress is the silent killer of retention in a growing number of organizations, including those devoted to recruiting. That may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s not far off the mark. According to the 2007/2008 Global Strategic Rewards report from Watson Wyatt and WorldatWork, almost 40% of employees cited stress as the number one reason for leaving their last employer. Even more disturbing, when their employers were asked to identify the leading source of employee attrition, they ranked stress at number five. That’s why I call it “the silent killer”-no one’s paying much attention to stress on-the-job.

What causes stress in a recruiting organization? Well today, of course, all you need to do is look out the window. There’s a large and growing number of people now on the pavement looking for work. Not only does that mean that many organizations are reducing their workforce, it suggests that recruiters have nothing to do. Their employers are simply not recruiting or have substantially curtailed their new hiring activity. And that’s a position that’s way too close to the door for anyone’s comfort.

Now, obviously, there’s nothing a recruiting team can do to change the economy. Accepting the reality of our situation, however, doesn’t mean that we should simply throw in the towel and let the hard times overwhelm us. In my view, recruiters have what it takes to be more resilient than that. What should we do? I think we should use the slower pace of recruiting to embark on a “recruiter’s stress reduction program.” Here’s what it entails.

If you’re the recruitment leader in your organization, pull together a group of your best performers to implement the following three step process. If you’re not the leader, get that person to form such a group and put it to work on the process. Why should you (and the recruiting team) bother? There are at least several reasons:

• First, stress is a killer, literally. It undermines your psychological and ultimately your physical health.
• Second, stress also degrades your performance which, in turn, undermines your job security.
• And third, stress on-the-job seeps into your family and social life and undermines your ability to enjoy them, as well.

A Recruiter’s Stress Reduction Program

Step 1: Conduct a stress test among your recruiting team. Use this blind survey among your colleagues to determine what’s currently causing any pressure or anxiety they may feel. Nothing is off limits, but the goal is to identify the fixable sources of stress within your organization. While there may be some harrumphing about leadership or culture or compensation policies, what we’re looking for are the irritants that collectively begin to add the plaque of stress to a recruiter’s perceived ability to succeed on-the-job. These might be any (or all) of the following:

• An inadequate budget to do the job right;
• Not enough training to be properly skilled for the job;
• Unrealistic workloads or expectations of results;
• Unpleasant or counterproductive physical working conditions; and
• Unrealistic or unnecessarily demanding meeting or work schedules.

Step: 2: Identify the stress reduction resources you have at your disposal. Survey the availability of three kinds of resources in your organization:

• Non-conventional resources internal to the staffing group. While budgets may be tight during a difficult economic period, the situation may actually make another valuable resource among recruiters even more available: time. That “free” time, in turn, may also free up another resource that’s normally committed elsewhere: recruiter talent.
•  Conventional resources internal to the staffing group. Oddly enough, it is possible that “normal” resources might be more available in an abnormal recruiting environment. For example, the slower pace of recruitment advertising may free up funds for other potential (stress reducing) investments. Similarly, staff reductions elsewhere in the organization may make computers or other equipment available.
• Resources that can be acquired outside the staffing group. Those outside the recruiting group may also have some of the same resources available and be willing to invest them on your behalf if asked. For example, a reduction in workload in the finance department may enable someone on that staff to invest some time in tutoring recruiters on building the business case for corporate investments.

What’s available to each recruiting team is idiosyncratic to its organization. Use the survey to build a list of the resources you have and, as best you can, quantify them. For example, you might determine that you have two hours per week of recruiter expertise that you could invest in training or in a task force to search for and identify the best recruitment advertising sites for your organization.

Step 3: Allocate the resources you have to address the sources of stress that you’ve identified. Determine which of the stressors you identified in Step 1 are most susceptible to being reduced successfully through an investment of the resources you identified in Step 2. For example, while there may not be the funds to hire an outside consultant, you may be able to draw on the talents of your own colleagues (and/or those in the IR department) to remediate a stressful skill shortfall in using the full functionality of your applicant tracking system. With that analysis as your start point:

• Build and prioritize a list of specific stress-reduction actions;
• Brief the entire recruiting team so they understand and appreciate what’s being done; and then
• Execute the steps and lower the stress you and other members of the team feel.

This process won’t completely reduce the stress in recruiting teams-it won’t affect the stress induced by the difficult economy, of course-but it will address those sources of stress that can be self-corrected. No less important, it demonstrates to the recruiting team that the organization (or at least its recruitment leader) cares about their well being, and it shows the organization at large and its senior leaders that the recruiting team has the initiative and savvy to preserve the talent for which it is directly responsible.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

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