Many companies are finding it more and more difficult to hold on to company talent. Whatever the cause or reason may be, people move on. However, does this always need to be the case? In this snippet from an interview between Dale Beaumont and John Rawson discover some top tips on staff retention techniques and see how they can affect your own company.
With 25 years of business experience and a demonstrated gift for sales, John turned his hand to business consulting. He has since built a consultancy practice that specialises in business management and leadership systems based on improving people skills.
Staff retention is a popular term used in the business world. What are your top tips for holding on to company talent?
- Design a job description – hiring and then retaining people starts with designing a role or job description really well. The number one complaint from two-thirds of employees is lack of clear direction. This comes down to designing good job descriptions and then using them to manage people.
- Hire for attitude – it is important to remember to hire for attitude over skills. The theory here, and the reality that we have seen in the last ten years, is that someone with skills and a bad attitude is not worth having around. They quickly poison the people around them and this makes for a very bad working environment.
- Write a plan – in our programs, once people are hired and start working with our clients they must then write a personal work plan. They must set their goals for the next 12 months and contribute to developing their own training plan. They are asked to examine their training needs for the year and undertake at least four tasks that involve professional and personal development. Since training is now considered as valuable as money in the remuneration process, people are often prepared to concede money for training in today’s job market.
- The final interview – have the staff or management teams that will be working with the new employee conduct the final interview. This has been dubbed the ‘tribal council‘ by many of our clients’ staff. If this happens with a manager, the people that he or she will be managing should decide on which potential employee fits the company culture best. This is especially important if the job requires technical skills as well. For example, a fitter and turner can put one over an inexperienced manager, however they cannot fool their technical peers.
In all the job placements we do, we now use this method. It speeds up acceptance of a new employee and/or manager and can save months of settling in for a new employee. Since the new employees have been selected by their peers, these peers now work with the new employee to back up their initial vote of confidence in them and to make sure they do well in the job.
For more of this interview and staff retention techniques check out “Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed!“
