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.

by Carli Kistler-Miller

Director of Programs & Marketing, PMPA

Published January 1, 2022

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

Read: Overall Organizational Effectiveness: How Do You Know?

• 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. 

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