Retaining your stars and good-eggs

In a competitive market economy finding staff with relevant and high quality skills is hard and can be easy to lose.

Therefore some simple and clear action can make a difference and not cost the organisation anything more than time and thought.

A satisfied employee knows clearly what is expected from him/her every day at work.

Retaining good staff is as much of a challenge to a business as recruiting good staff. People leave managers and supervisors more often than they leave companies or jobs. There are some clear pointers here that can help. 

Let’s start with some of the most frequent employee complaints:

Lack of clarity about expectations

Ask yourself for each role, ‘what good looks like?’ Ensure you make a list detailing this with respect to each role in the business. You now have a great list of expectations to convey to employees

Lack of clarity about earning potential

Bonus and commission can be a bone of contention - remove any uncertainty here and be clear from the word go. Broken promises are hard to repair

Lack of feedback about performance

Weekly 1-2-1s are great. They are quick and motivating, and really useful for constructive feedback

Failure to hold scheduled meetings

Make sure this is disciplined. Think about the message - if a meeting doesn’t matter what other things don’t really matter?

Failure to provide a framework within which the employee perceives they can succeed

Define what success looks like? Another simple guide is to provide a 6-month framework and write it down. That provides an agreed plan that an employee can strive towards.

Anyone who has studied Herzberg’s Theory of Motivation know that money is not always the key motivator for staff. If this is not the primary motivator then consider what is?  It’s a great starting point for a business, so if you consider and find out the key employee drivers in your company, you will have a powerful piece of management information. So use it!

You may not be a John Lewis or Marks and Spencer but even small agencies and companies can have a good ‘Hygiene’ Factors policy.