Keeping the Talent You’ve Got!

Are you about to lose one of your top performers? You can count on it!

The market for great talent has become very tight. Companies in a hiring mode are solidly in the hunt. They need more talent to support increasing sales; different talent to address changing market demands and emerging opportunities. They may not have the staff and leaders they now need. But you do.

As you consider your own hiring needs, recruiters everywhere are turning over any stone to uncover the best people, including your best people. If you wait for the resignation of a key player, and then try to reverse it, you’ll be too late. And if they don’t then leave, they’ll have been introduced to alternatives, found their real value in the market place, and set their imaginations in motion.

Here’s the point. You have the same tools to keep your talented people as other companies have to lure them away:

Affinity: Cultivate a collegial environment that emphasizes collaboration and common values. Appreciate each employee beyond their job description. Value the whole person and help build their self interest in the company’s success---their bonds with organization and colleagues that would be hard to leave.

Recognition: Good employees appreciate being noticed for what they accomplish. It’s not hard to show your appreciation and recognize employees for jobs well done. Also, for example, try the assignment of special projects, added training, a promotion, or differentiated compensation. Send a clear message: “You’re an appreciated and valued member of the organization.”

Challenge (within each position): Great employees thrive on non-repetitive work and assignments that stretch their abilities and build their capabilities.

Career Opportunity: Understand your people’s career interests and aspirations, and structure the right opportunities to help that realization.

Good Leadership: Keeping great employees requires great leaders who also provide the right structure, predictability and climate, balanced with respect and an open dialog. Note: Repetitive studies reconfirm that among employees who have resigned, the reason they most commonly cite: “my boss was an ass.”

In an effort to make this all easy, too many employees opt to just increase pay. Consider – if an employee’s main focus is their paycheck, is that the employee you’d rely on to grow or change and your company?

Employee turnover is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on who you lose, and who you keep. While your company is recruiting new talent, other companies are behind you, wooing your best people. When contacted, the best people have real talent to sell, and the initiative to sell it.

These are the employees you don’t want to lose.