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%
Very useful reminder of the importance of a good retention strategy. Too often companies throw money at the retention of top talent without understanding that this is an expensive mistake.
Lee Thompson
No 10 on your list is very interesting and in my experience very true. Once one talented individual leaves a business then it’s a green light for others to look for other opportunities.