How can you leverage Neuroscience to win the war for talent?

What is Neuroscience?

Neuroscience is the study of the brain. Neuroscience is a combination of medical, evolutionary, and computational disciplines, fostering a deeper understanding of how the more than 85 billion nerve cells in the human brain are born, how they grow, and interconnect to form human thoughts and actions.

Two of the more common branches of Neuroscience are cognitive and behavioural.

Cognitive neuroscience addresses questions such as how psychological/cognitive functions are reflected by neural activity in the brain.

In contrast, behavioural neuroscience addresses the impact of the nervous system on attention, perception, motivation, performance, learning, and memory and their manifestations in human behaviour. Studies in behavioural neuroscience focus on the interaction of brain and behaviour in real or simulated environments.

In the war for talents, you need to win several battles from attracting talents to selecting the right one, developing them and keeping them engaged.

How to attract some talents?

If your company is well known or brand new. Make sure that you build a consistent brand identity associated with key values, company culture, a mission and a vision.

Our brain likes consistency and clarity.

Branding is processed throughout our brains across memory, emotions, reward centres, self-understanding, social relationships associations. Ultimately, all of these identity elements and experiences come to represent your brand.

Be aware that unknown brands can even activate parts of the brain associated with negative emotions (the insula reaction) when we first encounter them.

Research shows that consistent, positive interactions with a brand creates positive psychological reinforcement when it’s encountered the next time. On the other hand, negative experiences can do just the opposite. Brands who deliver consistent, high-quality experiences across different touch-points like retail, social and customer service don’t just win hearts — they actually win minds and change how we think.

Start to build a solid brand and you will attract talents.

What is the pathway to attract talents?

Finding the right employees and creating symbiosis in the workplace is essential for every company. The same goes for employees who want to be in a role that suits them. After having a clear brand identity, design a very clear profile of the candidate you are looking for.

Then build a strong job description that will triggers the right person.

The brain is looking for purpose, belonging and fit with their values. Clarify your mission, vision, value and culture in your offer. Be authentic and aligned with who you truly are as a company.

Finally communicate your offer via the channel your talents will prefer and with the tone that will fit with your brand identity.

When you enter in the selection phase use the best of Neuroscience.

The abilities employees use to perform their daily activities are inextricably linked to the brain. Improve employee selection with the use of neuroscience-based assessment. Assess candidates’ cognitive and non-cognitive abilities and select the right employees for your company.

You have at your disposal multiple assessment tools based on scientific research such as Caliper, Kolbe, Predictive Index or even fun gameslike like Insymbo or Pymetrics can be used to give your candidates a positive selection experience. In the games, candidates, for example, try to remember colours of objects and respond to directions of arrows. This engaging, objective, and fair approach helps us assess candidates’ cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.

It is the best way to avoid cognitive bias like the famous “Halo effect” or “The first good impression” and asses the candidate potential in a fair way.

How do you keep your employee engaged?

Put effort to increase employee’s satisfactions pays back. It will increase the productivity level by 202% (Business2community study). En the cost of an employee who is leaving will be at least the equivalent of two-month salary (Gallup).

Build a great employee experience from the start with the help of our brain knowledge.

The brain has an aversion to change, to uncertainty end to the unknown, make sure your recruit is well introduced to the company members before day one and create unformal moments to build connections with the team members.

Provide him/her a sponsor who will make sure that the person is well introduced.

The brain needs to feel integrated.

One of the biggest fear of all of us is to be rejected by a group.

We are social animal and for decades our survival depended on the belonging to a group.

Make sure you create a sense of inclusion. Build a supportive environment where empathy is at the centre. Otherwise people might lose their unique talent and will play the chameleon just to be accepted by the group.

The brain needs rewards but more over recognition, why?

Again we are social animal and the status in a group is important. Being recognized by their peers from a job well done is the most delightful mess for the brain. And if you can personalize it to the individual needs, it is even more powerful. Some people will need to be recognized for the achievement of their goals in public some people will prefer to be recognized more discreetly with financially reward.

The brain needs safety. If you want your talents to be able to express the best of themselves and come up with creative solutions, you need to build a safety environment where everyone can express. And you also need a career perspective. It gives a safety feeling and a purpose to overachieve.

Safety goes with giving your employees a good boss.

A good leader is able to build a team where every member is respected for his talent, where people can trust each other where the communication is clear and transparent and where potential conflicts are managed in a healthy way.

A good leader can coach and develop others and use empathy and active listening to assess his team member’s needs. A good leader is a great observer who can help people to get rid of their limiting beliefs to deliver their best potential. A good leader encourage and support his team members to achieve a common goal together.

The brain needs freedom and autonomy. You will not be able to keep your best talents engaged if you don’t give them the autonomy to achieve their goal in their best way.

Micromanagement and lack of trust are motivation killers.

The brain needs challenges. Assess regularly the tasks your team is running and make sure it fits with what the people like to do or are interested to develop.

An engaging work needs to be stimulating. Be aware that new or creative work stimulate the production of dopamine (reward hormone) that boost self-confidence and happiness. The dopamine can also be boosted by celebrating progression steps with your team or even by the achievement of a reasonable tasks that you can check proudly at the end of the day.

The brain needs learnings .Build a development plan and a career pathway for each employee. Adopt the most relevant Neurosciences knowledges in your trainings.

• We all have got enough neuroplasticity to learn until our very old age.
• We are all more stimulated with colourful presentations and images.
• The memorization of information increases with strong positive emotions linked to it, build emotional stories in your trainings.
• Encourage active trainings and ask people to play the teacher role.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat key messages and do regular quiz to anchor the information’s.
• Plan regular pauses in your training

The brain needs regular contacts with other people. When people are in contact their brain delivers oxytocin that hormone of affection is acting as a stress reliever and is essential for our mind balance. Even if you can provide flexibility to work from home keep physical contacts for the wellness of all. People how are well connected with colleagues tend to be more loyal to their employer.

The brain needs purpose.

More than anything the best motivation is coming from your job purpose and the passion you have good for your projects. Even if we all have got some less attractive tasks in our jobs the purpose is reason to give the best of yourself;

Finally, if you want your employee to keep a healthy mind encourage them to exercise and have fun to boost their endorphins. (pain reliever)

To eat well, meditate, walk in the nature and get sunlight to boost their serotonin (mood stabilizer). The balance of a brain can be easily damaged when facing chronic stress and needs a good dose of positive hormones to maintain his well-functioning. The brain is the most complex organ, and we are making new discoveries every day but needless to say

that what we know today can already help company to manage their most precious value their people. By providing them the right place to be able to give the best of themselves and contribute to your company success.

Happy and healthy people are engaged and productive. Make sure you invest in their health and satisfaction.

You can count on Customer Collective to support you to along the way to win the war of talent.

We are business strategists & marketers with in-market experience in more than 200 clients: we know what it takes to get the best talents on board and to keep them.

We help you to clarify your brand identity, to design the best marketing team, to attract talents, to develop the right capabilities and to integrate them in your team.

We think and design together with you, we coach you on the go to deal with how to build a sustainable marketing team at each step of the process. We get our hands dirty: we go until the last mile of implementation.