Engage and retain employees in order to survive

With the rising temperatures in the job market and explosion of new technologies, your key talent has a myriad of new job opportunities.

Intelligence about other companies’ cultures and work environments is available at the swipe of a screen. In the hyper connected world, there is no place for any organisation to hide.

This increased transparency about your company’s workplace has the power to impact on your bottom line in the same way your marketing strategies impact on your product and service differentiators.

It also means that it is far easier for your key talent to learn about new and enticing job opportunities.

The talent paradox is that despite the high unemployment rate, the number of “battle ready” employees with the requisite skills necessary to carry out an organisation’s mission are dwindling.

In our open talent economy, loyalty to an organisation is a commodity in increasingly short supply and research shows that there are few employees who will be willing to throw themselves onto their swords for their employer.

Fully harnessing what they have to offer during their “tour of duty” with your firm versus seeking to sign them up as part of your “permanent force” is a more realistic tactic if you are going to succeed in outmaneuvering your rivals.

But this battle strategy is tricky. It means you must first embrace that the balance of power has shifted from employer to employee.

In order to get what the company needs, the employer must align organisational objectives with the goals and expectations of their talent for a win/win value proposition. To do this, several new practices and strategies have emerged.

Ask your employees what matters: Conduct employee surveys regularly to find out what makes them passionate about work and what parts of the environment are irritating or too bureaucratic.

Remember, it is the work: Make sure the organisation is feeding employees’ needs for purpose and meaningful work.

While there is a necessary focus on benefits, compensation, and workplace flexibility, research suggests that these are table stakes. A more important dimension for retention is the work itself.

Make development part of the job, not a perk: Opportunities for challenge and development may be the most overlooked element of retention and engagement.

Give every employee, not only high performers or leadership candidates, opportunities to build networks within the organisation, along with skills and career development opportunities.

Chances may be that the organisation already is, so be sure these opportunities are understood so that individuals see them as such and value them more.

Study retention continuously: Keep your finger on the pulse of the organisation regularly, not just annually or periodically. Use exit surveys and manager interviews to understand what was missing.

Provide open blogs and communication tools to help people talk openly about what they need and what they value.

Build a proactive retention model to identify potential problems before they occur: Adopt talent analytics to uncover the hidden drivers of retention.

Design work environment solution sets around the findings to drive greater performance, passion and retention stickiness.

Collaborate with other top leaders: The CEO’s executive committee should play a role in developing and nurturing a compelling corporate mission, including determining how to integrate social and community goals into the work as well as daily activities of the company.

Challenge the performance management process: Is it timely enough? Does it provide actionable feedback? Is the focus disproportionately on areas for development, giving short shrift to strengths and contributions?

Could your performance management process be a catalyst to losing talent?

The battle for talent is intensifying with no end in sight. Are you doing enough to engage and retain your talent?

Populate your business with more effective people than your competitors. Attracting talent is only half the battle, retaining your talent is mission critical. Your talent is not expendable.

Hollis is a senior manager, Human Capital, Deloitte East Africa [email protected]