SWOT for Employee Retention and Recruitment
What is your brand? Why should people want to work for your company? How can your brand improve? A SWOT analysis can help answer these questions — your employee retention and recruitment may count on it.
A SWOT analysis may be done by an individual, several people individually or as a group exercise with statements tailored for your company.
Your company’s brand can affect employee retention and recruitment. The brand may be by design or default and creating a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis can give you insight as to what your brand actually is, ways to improve your brand, and ways to use your brand to retain and recruit employees.
Create a SWOT Analysis
Create four columns on a piece of paper or download the template at PMPA.org/SWOT. Consider the statements below and list the appropriate ones in the proper column. Feel free to add any statements. It’s important to be honest when considering the statements or this effort is futile.
Company
- growing/stagnant/declining company
- growing/stagnant/declining industry
- heavily/moderately/slightly competitive industry
- serve diverse/concentrated industries
- location is easy/difficult to get to
- location in a safe/unsafe neighborhood
- currently hiring/layoff/firing employees
- high/low employee turnover
Company in the Local Community
- good/bad reputation
- considered trustworthy/untrustworthy
- positive/negative media coverage
- participates/does not participate in community events or charities
Leadership
- strong/weak leadership
- strong/weak employee management/foreman/quality relationships
- encouraging/degrading leadership
- listens/does not listen to employee ideas or concerns
Employees
- current employees proud/ashamed/indifferent of what they do
- current employees proud/ashamed/indifferent of where they work
- employees recommend/don’t recommend friends and family to work at your company
- career/job opportunities
- chances/no chances for advancement
- stable/unstable positions
- in-house/no in-house training
- funding/no funding for outside training
Compensation
- above/below/average wages for area
- offer/don’t offer health benefits
- offer/don’t offer retirement benefits
- offer/don’t offer paid vacation or PTO
Work Environment
- safe/unsafe environment
- challenging/boring, repetitive work
- permanent positions
- temporary positions
- first/second/third shift opportunities
- desirable/undesirable hours available
- team environment
- work from home opportunities for office workers
This analysis may be done by an individual, by several people individually or as a group exercise. The statements should be tailored for your company. When the SWOT analysis is complete, you may notice that the weaknesses and threats can become strengths and opportunities.
About the Author
Carli Kistler-Miller
Carli Kistler-Miller, MBA, has over 20 years of experience with communications, event/meeting planning, marketing, writing and operations. Email cmiller@pmpa.org at PMPA.
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