Look around the conference table at your next team meeting. Who is struggling to keep their most talented team members? Who has gathered the best team around them, people who are passionate about giving their best? List the talented individuals in your organization that you can’t imagine losing. Many leaders in Thailand and beyond are anxious and challenged about getting business results while finding it difficult to a team that can execute on the mission. The best and fastest way to build a solid foundation of people who drive optimal business results is to hire the right people, and KEEP them once they have proven their potential. You can not develop a pipeline of talent if they are walking out the door.
Here are several ideas to consider; some of which may work for you to hold onto the talented people in your organizations, while you continue your search to hire and develop a pipeline of talent for the future.
Identify and Bolster Mission Critical Positions. Mission critical positions are disproportionately important to the organization’s ability to execute its strategy. Invest resources in these positions through focused selection, de-selection, promotion, development and communication.
Ask yourself and your organization, “What positions are disproportionately important to delivering or business results? What must be done to more fully engage high potential individuals in those positions?”
Remove Barriers and Stay out of Their Way. High performers love to do good work that has meaning; what they don’t like is to be given non-essential work that sucks time and effort and makes no real difference to the business. Great leaders remove distractions and administrivia. They help their people get unstuck from activity traps. What top performers want is to get into the flow of fulfilling work and stay there, while being respected and appreciated by their managers.
Ask yourself and your organization, “What non-essential work activities have we burdened our most important employees? How might these activities be re-apportioned or jettisoned?”
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." --Peter Drucker
Conduct Stay Interviews Instead of Exit Interviews. Don’t wait for high-contributing talented people to announce their imminent departure. Take them under your wing. Find out what the like, and what they want. Tell them how much you appreciate their contributions and how much you want them to stay. Ask them what they would like to see happen to enrich their career. When people know they are valued and supported, they will almost always stay with that organization than leap to a new, unknown one.
Ask yourself and your organization, “Who can we bring under our wing to discuss what would be most meaningful to them for their continued career here?”
Attract and Select the Best Talent. Become a preferred employer. Is your organization known as one of the best places to work in Thailand? What positive messages can you provide prospective employees about your organization? Also, continuously improve your hiring practices to ensure you are hiring the best talent with the best fit for your organization’s needs. Good people like to work with good people. By selecting and retaining the people that fit your business, you establish a self-reinforcing, virtuous cycle.
Ask yourself and your organization, “What can we do to improve our employment brand and be clearer on what we are looking for in our candidates?”
Manage Retention and Turnover. Winning organizations use easy-to-implement approaches that create grateful employees such as giving awards for years of service or specific contributions, providing access to on-site fitness and wellness programs, making life a little easier through concierge services, or offering ways for employees to give back to the community.
Ask yourself and your organization, “Which of these approaches would be valued the most and are relatively easy to implement quickly?”
Select one or two of these ideas that you are able to institute quickly. Answer the questions in a way that will drive results and that fits your unique needs. Keep your best people and they will keep you in business!
About the Author
Brian Carlsen is the Director of Learning Solutions at the APMGroup and co-author of Attract, Engage and Retain Top Talent: 50 Plus One Strategies Used by the Best.
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