It’s Time We Had A Long, Hard Chat About Talent Retention At Your Enterprise

All business leaders know that talented employees are what makes the world go round. Or, at least their world. 

But the art and science of holding on to them is a bit of a mystery. When somebody is good at what they do, everyone wants them. And the average business leader winds up struggling. What can they do to keep them if the business down the road is offering them more money?

Employee retention is essential for a couple of reasons. The first has to do with costs. Replacing a star employee is often very expensive or virtually impossible. Such people are incredibly rare, and you don’t find out about most of them because they’ve all got their heads down, working hard in their respective businesses. 

The second has to do with branding. Companies that lose top people look bad. When a talented employee leaves a firm, it’s the enterprise itself that loses out the most. They would have liked to hold on to the employee, but couldn’t. 

So what are companies getting wrong that is causing them to lose their top talent? And what can they do to address the situation?

Choosing Candidates With A History Of Jumping From Firm To Firm

Sometimes you can spot a hard-to-retain talented employee from a mile off. They often spend their careers hopping from one company to the next in search of higher wage packets. Usually, the pattern is undeniable. 

Please note that these kinds of career movers don’t feel any loyalty to you. Instead, you’re merely a stepping stone on their road towards reaching the pinnacle of career success.

Where possible, avoid hiring these kinds of candidates. They’ll stick around for a couple of years and then disappear. And once they’re gone, they’re ridiculously hard to get back.

Provide Some Sort Of Professional Development Plan

Talented employees want you to provide them with training. They always need to feel as though they are progressing in their careers. If they don’t, they’ll start to panic and look for new opportunities elsewhere. 

Today, many players in the e-learning industry, like Janison, are bringing down the price of ongoing professional education. The idea is to get rid of all the usual ancillary costs associated with traditional college and focus solely on the educational content. Many services deliver training in bite-sized chunks, making it easy to incorporate into the regular working day. 

Provide Clear Advancement Paths

Talented employees also believe that they need to continually move forward with their careers, taking on more and more responsibility. If they don’t, it can leave them feeling robbed and, again, looking for opportunities elsewhere. As a leader, you need to provide clear paths that show them where they could be in the next five years, if they stick it out with you. 

Provide The Right Benefits

Finally, providing the right benefits can make a massive difference in retaining staff. Modern workers don’t want company cars. Instead, they want flexibility with how they spend their time. Offering flexible hours, therefore, could be the silver bullet.