Retention of Talent

Shakespeare said "when you have hired, trained, developed a team of top people, you must do everything possible to "Bind them to you with hoops of steel"

It is said that people join companies but leave mangers. Managing talent = Retention of talent. Retention of talent is an ongoing & critical part of the manager's job and successful companies and their managers built retention strategies as a part of the system.

There was a study conducted by Gallup research which gave few pointers to companies indicating reasons as to why people stick to organizations:

1.Embrace a talent mindset: - Simply put, a talent mindset is committed to the view that without great talent you won't succeed. This culture comes not from the HRD but from CEO down.

2.Employees are clear of what is expected out of them :- It is said "what gets measured gets done". Are the job roles and responsibilities clearly defined and linked to objectives which need to be achieved? Companies need to ask themselves this question. There are many organisations who follow a periodic & regular (at times half yearly) performance review with clearly spelt out qualitative and quantitative evaluation parameters.

3."I need material, resources & support in the system to deliver successfully" expects the employee: - There is an interesting example I could share which took place in the sales department of one of our clients in the Print media sector. This company had a problem that while it would hire effective frontline sales people, they would be productive for the initial 1/2 years but these productive people would then start leaving while mediocre ones would continue. The situation was that each sales representative was assigned a sales temtory & there was an incentive linked to the sales revenue generated. As the sales revenue in a particular territory would increase, the company would split up the temtory into two, the reasoning being that one person could not service all those additional clients. However, this split in territory meant that people who were highly effective and ambitions sales people felt that their overall potential was not being fully exploited and the earning potential also reduced and hence they would leave. The company realized and corrected this mistake, and instead of splitting the territories, they provided assistants who would help in the ongoing follow up & service of key accounts. Instead of letting the incentive plan become ineffective, the company gave the top sales people the ability to deal competently with their ever-expanding book of business.
Another example is of companies where each manager has to commit himself to 10/12 days of training in a year & also for some days for his team otherwise no performance bonus is given.

4."I need to do what I do best everyday" is what employees tell their employers :- The job responsibility needs to be redesigned, if needed, to exploit the full potential of the employee's capability, which in turn, gives him/her a lot of job satisfaction. For this managers need to communicate regularly with their team members. It should never be shunted to the HR dept.
There is an example of a person who joined one of our clients which is a large multimedia house. He joined in the Direct Marketing division of the group but over a period of time, the employer realised that the employee, who had a background in Direct marketing, had good skillsets and talent to handle mainline advertising. The employee also showed inclination to move towards the job responsibility of mainline advertising & subsequently the company moved him to the department. It has now been a year, the employee and employers both are happy.

5."I need to know my manager cares" is the expectation of the employee: - Participative management where employees' suggestions, ideas are given due importance, are implemented & duly rewarded is one of the effective styles. There are many companies where the CEO of the company travels with his fieldforce (even in local transport if required) once in a month, to really see & feel for himself what are the challenges faced in the market place.

It is said that "there are never any bad soldiers under a good general"

Make your goal to be an "employer of choice"

Sarabjeet Sachar-Founder and CEO-ASPIRATION
Media n Entertainment Recruitment & Resume Services.