Eliminate Employee Turnover

Cultivating Careers Retains Top Talent

Listen to a group of business owners discussing today’s availability of skilled talent and you’ll mostly hear lamentations.  All will speak of skill deficiencies, minimal self-motivation, inability to pass drug tests, and entitlement attitudes.  Today’s hiring challenges are even greater than those faced just a few years ago. Politics, our education system, family composition (and many more reasons best researched elsewhere) contribute to these challenges; however, we want to share powerful suggestions for keeping the great talent you already have and ready your company to attract your next great employee.

First, stop complaining about scarcity of qualified workers in our country; simply accept it.  Free up your mental energy and time to focus on a solution.

Second, thoroughly examine your recruiting, development, compensation, and retention practices by answering these questions truthfully:

1. Do you have a standardized hiring process that provides for consistency in verifying prior work experience, skills, ethics, stability, workplace compatibility, and overall good “fit” to the job?
2. Do you have a written development guide that provides for continuing education for the position and expanded educational opportunities in other areas of the company that would be mutually beneficial?
3. Can you clearly explain and demonstrate advancement opportunities?
4. Do you have a compensation package, in writing, which rewards your employees for performance excellence and their contribution to the profitability of your company?
5. Do you have any benefits, other than simple employment, that provide a strong motivation for the employee to not seek outside employment prospects?
6. (Here’s the toughest question).  Thinking of your own skill sets and attributes, assuming that you wanted to work at least 10 more years, are there compelling reasons you would work at your company?

Your objective as a business owner is to attract great talent that fits the job position and the company culture exquisitely, and then KEEP them.  That can only happen if you stop filling “jobs” and instead, cultivate careers.  Careers are lifetime.  Jobs are transitory.  Have you heard the expression “Career Track?” Careers are built on a track that has a start and a finish line.  The finish should be the fulfillment of the life goals of your employee. If you do not have defined track, you are not prepared to offer more than a job, and truly great talent requires - perhaps even demands - far more.

Make time to define what you need and desire of your staff.  Put it on paper. Thoughtfully review how you will educate and nurture your staff.  Put that on paper.  Consider a progressive compensation plan that includes company profit sharing.  Write it down.  What else can you add that might motivate your key talent to retire from your company?  Write that down too.  Now, review your notes, ask the opinion of others, and refine it.

Invest time in your company’s career track design, publish it (so your company will be accountable to it), recruit the talent that best fits the track, and then fire your starter’s gun.

It’s always challenging to hire excellence, so once you have it, keep it!

We have tools and resources to help; find us at: https://perpetualbusiness.co/