Attracting
and Retaining Top Talent – The Key To Corporate Success
A
critical factor to the success of any company is its ability
to attract top talent while retaining those already working
within the company. Losing employees can have a significant
impact on a company’s morale, productivity and overall
profit.
Whether it be evidenced through expenditures in agency or
search firms, lowered productivity or morale, high turnover
costs your company. In fact, each time one of your employees
walks out your door for the last time, it can cost your company
anywhere from $25,000 for entry level positions, up to $250,000
for a senior level positions.
Understanding the reasons people leave is
the first real step in addressing the issues of retention and attraction.
Once you have a clear understanding of these reasons, you are ready
to move to the next stage of developing an attraction and retention
strategy to get and hold talented people.
The
formula for attracting and especially retaining top talent lies
in creating a high level of job satisfaction which includes not
only the work itself but factors relating to the climate or work
environment. One of the most over-estimated reasons companies think
they attract and retain top talent is through financial compensation.
However, financial compensation is ranked very low by many employees
when compared to achieving job satisfaction.
Excellent companies know intuitively the importance of providing
challenging work, opportunities to apply skills and the importance
that prospective employees place on company reputation. They work
hard to improve the climate of work because they know that this
will cause people to want to work for them based on their reputation
in the marketplace.
The following formula will help ensure that your company attracts
and retains top talent:
• Show your key employees that you care – take personal
interest in developing your staff. Mentor and coach high performers.
• Maintain your credibility by ensuring consistently that
there is no gap between what you say and what you do. Its called
the “Keep Your Promises” law!
• Measure and manage the “soft” skills as well
as the hard skills. In addition to rewarding output, profit, and
sales etc., provide recognition and reward for ‘how’
the work gets done, the people skills that contribute to a better
climate and greater satisfaction.
• Fight turnover with good training, targeted to specific
issues and individual needs. Beware of off-the-shelf training programs
that promise the world and deliver little.
• Weed out poor managers. Dissatisfied workers dislike poor
management. Act quickly to preserve your credibility in the workforce.
Remember the law of procrastination. “No matter how long you
ignore a problem employee, his or her behaviour will not improve-act
now!”
• Address issues of poor performance. Other workers resent
having to carry someone who cannot or will not pull their own weight.
In addition, be sure to provide inspirational vision
and strong values, meaningful and challenging work, offer career
opportunities, create an environment that enables people to do their
best work, offer tangible rewards in both monetary and non-monetary
ways and ensure work/life balance and support its importance.
Finally, remember that attracting and keeping the right people happens
not as a result of strategy – but implementation. Attracting
and keeping the right people translates into real dollars on the
bottom line. Pursue your goal of success for your company by creating
a great work climate. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how much
this approach will pay off for you.
