Archive for May, 2007
Ten Tips on How to Retain Top Talent
1) Don’t presume that Top Talent will always be available. There’s a world shortage of Top Talent in most business?sectors and that’s likely to become more acute.
2) Decide on the skills, attitude, aptitude and motivation that you require from your talent and then search for it using that criteria.
3) Look at how your competitors attract top talent and seek ways of improving what they do. Review this often as they will seek to copy your strategy.
4) Resist the temptation to “Throw Money at Top Talent”. Remember that talent doesn’t always look for money and in any event there will always be someone who will have more money?than you. Consider other strategies.
5) Identify why talent would be attracted to your firm.
6) Identify why talent stays with you or is leaving.
7) Different types of talent will look for different things. So be flexible in how you develop your talent strategy. One size won’t fit all.
8) Don’t vest all your energy into one small section of talent (such as a graduate programme). The ideal solution is to have talent from top to bottom in the organisation.
9) If your business is a SME consider having a talent strategy for your associates or even suppliers and review this regularly.
10) Remember that if one talented person leaves your business then the risk of losing further talent increases by 50%.?If you can attract top talent to you then your chances of attracting more increases by 50%
How TESCO hangs onto its Top Talent
It’s been reported that Tesco has found an ingenious way of holding onto its Top Talent. Under headhunting rules search companies and consultants will always sign an “off limits” agreement with clients. In effect this restricts anyone from poaching people from their clients when engaged by a rival company to fill a job vacancy. Tesco, it is alleged by some parts of the media, have engaged every headhunter it knows in a move to prevent Top talent being headhunted to Sainsbury or Marks & Spencer.This is all very well but if Tesco’s competitors also use this strategy then staff could well be “locked in” to their current firm and with little movement at all.
Well we doubt that, in reality, staff will not be moving from one superstore to another it but it’s an amusing thought to consider all that talent in Tesco’s, Sainsbury and M&Ss head office wondering why their phones don’t ring with job offers anymore!!