Five Tips to Retain Your Best Employees

Behavior strategist and performance management coach Joe Takash knows the keys to keeping your best employees and all it takes is five simple tips.

According to one survey results:

• 65% of companies are concerned about the retention of critical-skill and top-performing employees than they were before the economic crisis hit.

• Looking ahead three to five years, 55% of employers expect an increase in difficulty in retaining critical-skill employees
• In the light of the recession, 44% of employees have encouraged managers to make greater use of recognition plans. However, only 8% of these employees have seen managers actually increase their use of these plans to a significant or great extent.

Bottom line: Even in a tough economy, it is difficult to retain top talent.

A crucial part of navigating the turbulent waters of these economic times is to be sure you keep the right crew aboard to keep your ship afloat. Organizations that lose focus on this are asking for trouble both now and in the future, if they have one.

Here are 5 tips to be sure your high flyers are flying with you:

1.   Determine the motivations of top talent-How? Ask! It is important to be specific and assure questions like the following are answered by your top brass:

• Are you happy with where your career is headed?
• What would you like the next step in our career to be?
• How can I/we help you get there?

Exit interviews are not the time to determine these motivations. Find out what your future leaders need now and feed those who feed your machine.

2.   Make individual meeting a standard – Another common fumble by companies is that they don’t make individual updates a cultural consistency. They do back flips for their clients yet don’t look inward and pay special attention to those who drive business and pump oxygen into their organization. Meeting with your folks individually recognizes their importance and provides a wonderful forum for discovering what they may not disclose in a group meeting.

3.   Delegate and give responsibility – One of the biggest challenges for executives to let go because all that happens under their jurisdiction is their responsibility. Remember that your emerging leaders want to be challenged and be given assignments that utilize their talent. This is how they learn. Let go and show trust and you will be surrounded with a higher performing team.

4.   Become a teaching executive – Even the brightest executives have never been taught the fundamental rule of adult learning: Teaching has not occurred until learning is confirmed. Telling isn’t teaching and executives must know that even the brightest talent may process information differently than they do. Be sure you are patient and aligned as you develop and confirm that understanding has happened.

5.   Share knowledge – In the absence of feedback, people create their own and it is typically negative. Executives must keep their folks abreast of what is going on, regularly! Providing knowledge, which is different from data. Data is merely “the what.” Knowledge is “the what, the why and the how they play a vital role to change and growth.Keep your top talent informed and you will keep morale high and these key players passionate about sticking around.

(Source: “5 Tips to Retain Top Talent”by Joe Takash, Behavior Strategist - www.JoeTakash.com | Published in Life Science Leader – October 2009)