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Good help is hard to find. Retain the best, improve the rest.

Written by: Larry Mandelberg

Article Overview: The single most valuable asset any business has is its employees. Finding good people is always tough, even in times when unemployment is high. Even then, finding a good match of skills and culture for your business is tricky at best. And labor laws give leverage to the employee in most states. Therefore, before your employees have a chance to go stale, look for the best and recognize them. And take the rest and make them better! This article talks about how to do this, and why it is so critical to the long term stability and profitability of your organization.

Good help is hard to find. Retain the best, improve the rest.

According to several human resource studies, the cost of replacing an employee averages 150% of the annual wage of the person being replaced. And this only tells part of the story.

The replacement, once hired, takes approximately 13½ months to achieve an equivalent degree of efficiency. When you do the math that translates into 8½ months of full-time work is accomplished during that initial period of time, a net loss of 5 full months.

Even in this depressed labor market where many intelligent and talented people are looking for work, the real problem being faced by businesses today is retaining their best and brightest; those people with the historical and institutional knowledge that are the heart and soul of every organization. How do you keep them when it is truly difficult and time consuming to simply get a handle on how they are feeling?

Begin with the premise that your efforts must be proactive, not reactive, and ongoing, not situational. Waiting to act only gives the employee with doubts time to justify his or her feelings and find a good reason to leave. And by the time you find out they are leaving, their decision has been made.

Assuming you agree with the importance of retaining your staff, there are two aspects to this issue, each requiring a different approach. First is the need to keep your best and brightest challenged and engaged.

The most limited commodity of any supervisor or manager is time. Having been there myself, I realize how difficult it can be to continuously find ways to keep your staff challenged and productive. The problem is, that is not your job, and when you fall into that mental trap, you need to dramatically change the way you are thinking and acting.

Your best employees are the ones that understand the business, value the products and services they provide to their customers, and enjoy working with the customers to help make their lives and businesses better for them. It is the classic win-win-win scenario.

The road to this destination is bumpy and filled with potholes. It is a journey that demands multi-tasking along the way. While delivering value to customers, your staff must also identify areas of weakness and work on improving them while at the same time looking forward to creative and innovative ideas that will help the organization grow and serve its customers in new and better ways.

One successful approach is to engage your top performers in strategic efforts that will help them find the innovative new ideas they can research and implement without your guidance or oversight. Begin by identifying a strategic objective, share it with your top performers and have them work on the issue. Send one of them to a class to gather critical thinking best practices and bring those learning’s back to the team.

The bottom line is that good employees enjoy a good challenge. When everything is running smoothly, you may be happy, but they tend to get bored. And a bored employee is an unmotivated employee. Your job is to make sure they stay engaged and thinking about what they can do to improve the business, whether it is solving a problem or creating a desired result. Don’t allow yourself to be satisfied with a job well done, your best and brightest won’t.

The second aspect of staff retention is improving the quality of the under-performers. Begin with the premise that everyone wants to do a good job, and that cannot happen until you make their job crystal clear to them.

Your role as their leader is to ensure they understand the value the business is delivering to its customers, their customers. They must understand the role they play in that process and have some way to connect to the ultimate success of the business.

I have often heard managers complain that the more information they give their staff, the harder it is to keep them focused on their jobs. Hogwash I say. An uninformed employee is someone who has been asked to do a job blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their back. If you are honest and sincere, little harm can come from helping your staff understand where the company is heading.

Give your staff clear objectives, and measure their performance. When they perform, reward them. Sometimes a little bit of recognition or praise it all it takes. When they don’t perform, use the opportunity to educate and explain how and why their actions hurt the company, and you. This is not the time for criticism.

Treat your staff as if they are important, and make sure they know why you think they are important. If you can’t do that, you probably don’t understand the value of each employee and may need to rethink your staffing model. That needs to get corrected before you do anything else.

The moral to this story is a simple one. Treat your staff as if they are the most important component of your business. After all, there is no way you can have more direct and regular contact with your customers than your staff can. If they don’t make your customers feel valued and appreciated, nobody will. So focus on your staff and help them become the kind of employee’s you want them to be. You might be surprised at how positive their reactions are.

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  Engagement, Performance, Retention - Where Do Your Employees Fit?
  Three More Marketing Ideas for Client Retention
  Building Training Goals into Employee Reviews
  The Importance of Further Training and Education for Employees

Article Tags: business value, commodity, doubts, efficiency, equivalent degree, feelings, full time work, good reason, heart and soul, human resource studies, initial period, institutional knowledge, job, math, period of time, premise, supervisor



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