The escalating competition for skilled and experienced employees is a challenge facing organizations of all sizes across the country. But as this war for talent intensifies, Canada’s private companies can use their agility and other intrinsic assets to gain an advantage in attracting and retaining high-calibre individuals.

Filling key roles with qualified individuals has been a particularly acute concern for many organizations in recent months. After navigating the pandemic’s turbulence, a wave of senior leaders are opting to retire earlier than expected. This is upending the succession plans of many businesses, leaving them without the necessary people to advance the organization’s strategies.

Tackling this challenge requires retaining and elevating top-performing employees from within your organization as well as attracting high-calibre external talent. In both cases, fostering a workplace culture that helps employees feel connected to their company, its purpose and one another is a key part of the solution—and an area that plays to the inherent strengths of private businesses.

Culture as a differentiator

If purpose is what guides the direction of an organization, its culture—those common behaviours, traits and enablers—is what powers its journey. Both are powerful tools in attracting and retaining the right employees and are assets that often favour smaller organizations.

In our recent Global Culture Survey 2021—Canadian outlook, 63% of respondents working at companies with fewer than 1,000 employees said their organization has a distinctive culture that sets them apart from competitors. But that figure drops to 46% among larger organizations.

To help make this work to their benefit, it’s often beneficial for leaders of private businesses to reflect on the culture they’d like to foster within their organization. This can involve asking yourself questions such as:

what do I want my culture to be?
how do I want my employees to feel when they’re working?
am I engaging and energizing staff to work and lead in new ways?
does our organization foster employee-led innovation?
An important follow-up step is to ask the same questions to employees within your organization to understand their perspectives as well as find areas of overlap and divergence. This exercise can build trust within your organization and identify elements of your organization’s culture that could stand to evolve, be elevated or de-emphasized. Using their nimbleness to their advantage, private companies can experiment with new initiatives and react quickly to their evolving workforce priorities.

Turning challenges into opportunities
It’s not uncommon for leaders of private businesses to perceive they’re at a disadvantage on some fronts when competing for top talent. But behind many of these challenges are opportunities for private firms to use their agility to gain a competitive edge.

It’s true, for example, that some private businesses may not have the same instant brand recognition of a large multinational firm among prospective job applicants. But they’re often more firmly established in the communities in which they operate. Local sponsorships, regional marketing campaigns and other outreach activities can—when executed successfully—establish meaningful connections with prospective candidates and be a powerful employee attraction tool.

Similarly, it doesn’t take a multimillion-dollar training budget to foster a development culture that embraces everyday innovation. With the right digital upskilling strategy, private companies can empower their people to obtain the knowledge and skills needed for new and transformed roles—as well as gain a differentiated employee experience.