5 Tips to Retain Your HubSpot Talent Amidst the Great Resignation

In today’s market, especially during the Great Resignation, employee retention is mission critical, especially for hard-to-find specialists. The HubSpot talent demand is on the rise now more than ever, so it is more important than ever to be intentional with employee retention and engagement strategies. Utilize these tips to ensure your growth marketing gurus remain engaged, and saying, “Thank you, but I’m happy where I’m at,” to your competition in their InMail inbox. 

Five Tips to Retain Your HubSpot Talent

1 - Do Some Proactive Market Rate Analysis 

Amidst the Great Resignation, employers who are proactively considering off-cycle merit increases and market-level raises are sure to score massive points with their top specialist talent. Chances are with all of the information and opportunities coming at them about their career advancement opportunities, they’re already thinking about how to broach the subject with you at a minimum if not explore their external options. With the economic changes and it being an employees’ market, market adjustments and salary increases are skewing the national averages of many roles, so chances are your HubSpot talent can score a higher base elsewhere. If you’re not sure where to start, be sure to check out our 2021 HubSpot Ecosystem Salary Guide to help guide your analysis. Consider the amount of stress and dollars you will save by implementing a salary increase vs. churning your rockstars.

2 - Invest in the Tools They Need

HubSpot is a very powerful tool, however, it’s only as powerful as the Hubs, additional tech stack, and integrations you invest in. If your Marketing Technologist or Digital Marketing Strategist approaches you with a pitch to invest in additional HubSpot Hubs such as Operations Hub or Service Hub, or upgrade your Marketing or Sales Hubs, chances are you’ll see a return on investment in those costs due to their capabilities, as boost your employee’s engagement by being trusted, and not getting turned down. There’s only so much your top talent can do without the full stack of technology needed to automate and streamline your marketing, sales, and revenue operations, which alone is a huge undertaking if you have all the right tools.

3 - Give Them the Autonomy to Automate & Implement 

If you have a true HubSpot guru on your hands, chances are you won’t always understand the ideas they pitch for fresh automation, fresh tech implementation, or new ideas to up-level your sales and marketing game. Give them the autonomy to implement their ideas and automate your old ways. Digital marketing requires testing, and new strategies surface daily. Trust and track with the HubSpot campaign reporting tool, and fill the buckets of your employees by showcasing your trust, and removing the 'not right now' roadblock they need to produce results. After all, we have all been in the position where we know how to proceed, but need the green light from our leaders to do so. Remember the next time you hesitate how that red tape made you feel before you had the access to autonomy and budget authority.

4 - Map Out Their Career Path Down the Orange Brick Road

Further specializing in a monster technology, especially one like HubSpot that’s beginning to dominate the market, is the new career strategy to become an invaluable asset in digital marketing. Make sure you help cultivate this for your people, and don’t let fear of creating wicked talent that can exit stop you. The equity you will earn with your digital marketers by asking them where they want to be in one to two years, and sitting down to specifically map out how to get there (and asking for the learning and development budget for them) will earn major rapport. Also, don’t make it a vanity conversation in a standing 1:1. Set an intentional time to show you’re thinking about their career path, and the trajectory of their growth as a HubSpot and MarTech strategist or technologist.

5 - Protect Their Time & Energy

When we have heard stories of burnout, one of the simplest, and most affordable ways companies can protect their employees from disengaging is to protect their mental health, and time.

The easiest way to do this is to consider the fact that Marketing Technologists, Digital Marketing Strategists, Implementation Specialists, etc. need uninterrupted focus time. Reduce the amount of meetings you invite them to, the amount of team chat interruptions they receive in a day, and 100% respect their focus time blocks on their calendars (remember, you encouraged that idea, so don't blow it off). It’s wildly difficult to architect the campaigns and technical solutions they create, so provide them with the mental space to do so, and this will alleviate the stress of carry-over projects from day to day.

Beyond protecting your HubSpotters' time, advocate for them to protect their mental battery life. Many talented contributors think it’s important to work more hours because that’s what their managers want to see: more, more, more. But if we’ve learned anything from the increased burnout we’re seeing due to longer remote hours, ‘role spillover,’ and increased meeting times to accommodate virtual collaboration, encouragement from managers to take a lunch, block more focus time, and log off by a certain time is critical to employee retention. It may seem silly, but ‘permission’ for your people to do so—or even requiring it if your people have a weakness of setting boundaries—may be just the reminder they needed that you’re more than a manager, but truly care about their well being. 

For example, here at HubSearch, we encourage employees to take an hour of lunch, and squeeze in some decompression time. We know, cutting edge, right? But it’s becoming more of the norm to work through lunch on Zooms, so much so that maybe your new hires think it’s a culture norm or even an expectation.

We bet it will go a long way with engagement and employee satisfaction if they know you take their self-care to reduce digital fatigue very seriously. It may be just the thing to keep them from thinking the grass could be greener where that job listing is pulling them towards.

Embrace the Culture Shift

What we’re seeing today is definitely a shift from the “foosball table and reduced salary for all the fringe benefits” culture to a culture of “just give me autonomy, fair pay, tools to do my job, and compartmentalization.” As employers, we always have to pivot with the times and ensure we’re keeping up with what the sharp talent is looking for, but the great news is that three out of five of these tips just require the investment in caring for your employees, implementing more trust, and encouraging their growth. This is simple to do in a remote culture, and we bet you’ll feel amazing helping to cultivate your HubSpot rockstars’ careers. 

→ Want more tips on how to prevent burnout of your top HubSpot Talent? Grab our Burnout eBook for an expanded compilation of ideas!