Employee turnover can be a major challenge for organizations of all sizes and industries. When an organization is losing a significant amount of its top talent, its important for leaders to take action and analyze their talent acquisition and retention strategies. By doing so, they can identify areas for improvement and take steps to attract and retain top talent.
Here, 13 Forbes Business Council members share the first steps leaders should take when analyzing their talent acquisition and retention strategy to ensure they are building a strong and sustainable workforce.
The Complete Guide to Retaining Your Top Talent
Finding and hiring top talent is tough. But keeping your star employees engaged and loyal is even harder in today’s competitive job market. How can organizations retain their best people over the long-term? This comprehensive guide reveals research-backed strategies to hold onto your top talent.
Losing your most skilled and experienced employees inflicts major costs
- Lost productivity and declining performance
- Increased hiring and onboarding costs
- Lower morale organization-wide
- Disruption of operations, team dynamics, and client relationships
- Loss of insider knowledge and intellectual capital
High turnover of top talent can also damage your employer brand, making it harder to attract new stars. In contrast, organizations that master retention reap enormous benefits including:
- Sustained high performance
- Enhanced innovation and creativity
- Stronger leadership pipeline
- Smooth succession planning
- Deep organizational knowledge
- Consistent external service quality
In today’s skills-scarce economy, retaining top talent provides a crucial competitive edge.
Top 5 Ways to Retain Your Best Employees
Follow these research-backed strategies
1. Invest in Managerial Skills
An Alison Doyle survey found the #1 reason employees quit is a poor relationship with their direct manager. Key management behaviors that frustrate top employees include:
- Micromanaging and distrust
- Poor communication and opacity
- Failure to provide challenges and development
- Lack of inspiration and vision
- Neglecting frequent feedback and recognition
Provide managers training in core retention skills like delegate coaching, motivating teams, developmental planning, and change leadership. Also hold them accountable for retention metrics.
2. Promote Inclusive Culture
HR consultancy Mercer finds highly inclusive workplaces achieve twice the innovation and 3 times the retention of less inclusive organizations. Key ways to build an engaging culture for diverse top talent:
- Foster belonging through shared experiences and camaraderie
- Provide employee resource groups aligned to diverse communities
- Offer flexibility in how and when work gets done
- Promote tolerance through values, policies, and unconscious bias training
- Ensure diverse representation across leadership roles
3. Support Ongoing Growth
A LinkedIn survey reveals 94% of employees would stay at companies that invest in their careers. Enable continual learning through:
- Formal training programs, seminars, and workshops
- Job rotations, shadowing, stretch assignments, and project variety
- Clear paths for advancement and lateral growth
- Internal mobility and transfer opportunities
- Tuition reimbursement and learning stipends
- Mentorship and sponsorship programs
Role challenge and career development are magnets for top talent.
4. Offer Compelling Rewards
Monetary and non-monetary rewards both contribute to retention. Benchmark compensation regularly to ensure pay equity. Boost engagement through:
- Incentive bonuses, profit sharing, employee stock options
- Flexible work arrangements
- Wellness perks like office gyms, massage, and mental health support
- Extra vacation time, sabbaticals, and volunteer days
- Public praise, awards, and title promotions
Customizing rewards to employee preferences heightens motivation.
5. Gather Regular Feedback
Pulse surveys, town halls, and one-on-ones offer insights into frustrations before employees quit. Topics to cover include:
- Job satisfaction and engagement
- Manager relationship
- Workload, processes, and tools
- Interest in new projects
- Development needs
- Organizational improvements
Respond quickly to address concerns surfaced proactively.
Early Warning Signs of Turnover Risk
Watch for these red flags indicating your top talent is disengaging:
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Decline in productivity or quality of work
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Loss of interest in special projects and initiatives
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Lack of career planning or goal-setting
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Disengagement in team meetings and discussions
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Few questions and ideas put forth
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Increase in absences and tardiness
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Limited effort to build internal networks
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Sudden interest in compensation and benefits
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Overheard complaints about management
Promptly investigate symptoms before top talent leaves.
Make Retention an Ongoing Priority
Here are tips to ingrain retention-focused practices:
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Track metrics like satisfaction, turnover, manager ratings, and engagement by segment
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Hold managers accountable for retention through compensation and job expectations
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Analyze exit interviews to spot patterns and improve
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Regularly benchmark pay and development opportunities vs competitors
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Incorporate retention into long-term strategic planning
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Budget for enhanced rewards, training, tools, and culture-building
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Collect real-time feedback data using pulse surveys and analytics
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Publicize retention successes internally and highlight role models
Proactive, data-driven efforts to retain your stars will solidify your organization’s talent advantage. Losing top employees should be the exception, not the norm.
Retaining Top Talent Is a Team Effort
While management plays a central role, every employee contributes to retention. Here’s how different groups can help:
Leadership: Champion retention as a core priority. Allocate resources to fulfill promises to talent.
Managers: Develop trusting partnerships with employees. Set clear goals. Provide coaching, feedback, and growth opportunities.
Employees: Embrace inclusion. Make new hires feel welcomed. Model enthusiasm and commitment. Give honest survey input.
HR: Benchmark pay and practices. Facilitate training. Identify flight risks early. Measure and analyze engagement data.
Admin Staff: Handle processes smoothly and quickly. Resolve issues and answer questions. Celebrate successes.
Key Takeaways
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Turnover of top talent inflicts heavy organizational costs. Retention provides a competitive advantage.
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Strengthen management capabilities in motivating, developing, and engaging teams.
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Promote inclusion and continual growth. Customize rewards. Solicit frequent feedback.
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Develop metrics-driven programs to monitor and improve retention.
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Make retention an organization-wide priority, not just an HR issue.
Losing top talent should never be the norm. Follow these insights to enhance retention, performance, innovation, knowledge sharing, and lasting relationships across your workforce. Your organization’s success depends on it!
Offer The Right Compensation
Our talent (faculty and staff) can often make higher salaries in the industry, so we analyze our ecosystem to highlight other tangible and intangible compensation. Those include the substantial financial benefit of free tuition for employees and families. Our work environment is highly flexible, mission-driven, collegial and vibrant. The impact on individuals and the future is unsurpassed. – Gregory Crawford, Miami University
Understand Your Team With Quantitative Data
Start with your quantitative data to understand what teams and areas of the business are most impacted. You need to look to see if the issue is with a specific demographic, team or manager. You should also benchmark your total compensation to ensure you are at “market” for your industry. Then, using an engagement survey can identify more qualitative (but critical) aspects of employee sentiment. – Jason Murray, Fringe
Employees dont leave companies; they leave poor managers and bad cultures. Therefore, determining where the turnover is coming from—whether its a specific department or systemic—is important. Be willing to look in the mirror. Conduct exit interviews to learn why employees are leaving so you can prevent it from happening. – Adam Povlitz, Anago Cleaning Systems
The SECRET To Attracting And Retaining Top Talent At Your Company Is Employee Experience
How do you retain top talent?
Sometimes, all you have to do to retain top talent is ask the right questions and listen. Additionally, conducting regular performance reviews can help tie an employee’s performance to your company successes. This gives managers a chance to weigh the expectations of employees against their performance and contributions.
How do you retain talent from the first day?
Take steps to retain talent from the first day by providing employees clarity around their roles, day-to-day requirements, and what success looks like—all of which can be accomplished with a formal onboarding and orientation process.
Is your business at risk of losing top talent?
As employees decide what’s right for them, employers are having to reconsider what actually makes their company worth working for. If you feel like your business may be at risk of losing top talent, or you have already begun losing your best workers to the Great Resignation, it is probably time to consider some employee retention strategies.
Why is it so difficult to retain top talent?
It has now become more challenging to retain top talent. The Information Technology (IT) industry itself and the digital world is making it look more competitive because people can work remotely and take advantage of great compensation packages. Most great hires out there are already employed for an obvious reason.
