Keeping Your Most Valuable Employees

As more opportunities become available, are you sure that you can engage and retain your most valuable employees?

At the onset of a bad economy, not many have the courage or confidence to go elsewhere and try something new. Employees stay with what they knew because job security was the issue for many jobs.

Now they may be tempted to stray. Especially with all of the recent changes that your company has probably been through.

What can you do?

1. Size the Problem: First, recognize that attrition has many costs and that retention of your key folks is critical and, in terms of productivity, the less turnover the better. Most of our clients estimate that a lost employee costs about 1.3 times their fully loaded salary to replace on average. The costs rise as the strategic importance of the job increases and as the availability of talent for the position in the marketplace decreases.
   
   
2. Identify Top Talent: List your most important jobs and list employees with the highest performance and potential. Get key stakeholders and management to agree on the list.
   
   
3. Invest in Engaging and Retaining Your Top Talent: Once you know the size of the problem and your target population, it is time to:
   
   
   • Assess key managers' effectiveness in retaining top talent against specific behaviors proven to impact employee retention
     
     
   • Use employee engagement training to teach leaders how to identify top talent most at risk of leaving and to develop specific retention action plans to engage retain pivotal employees

Not only will you enjoy improved employee satisfaction but you will also reap the benefits of higher productivity, profits, and customer satisfaction.