Reducing the Risk of Losing Your Top Talent

Reducing the Risk of Losing Your Top Talent
By Bob Moore, CMC, The Effectiveness Coach®

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Reading Time: Less than 3 minutes

Many economic indicators point to the "beginning of the beginning" of the recovery. Regardless of when the recovery gets here, it is sure to come. How to retain top talent is an important question hiring managers need to answer right now.

As part of a survey conducted by recruiting expert Lou Adler, respondents were asked to describe their current job-hunting activity level. The answers ranged from not looking to aggressively looking. In early August, 78% of the extremely satisfied said they were absolutely not looking. This dropped to 57% by the end of August.

A similar drop was noted for those who classified themselves as being satisfied with their jobs, dropping from 51% who were absolutely not looking to just 18%. Adler believes this drop in job satisfaction, in combination with an increased level of job-hunting activity, is a strong indicator that the employment churn is about to increase dramatically in the next month or two.

Here are three steps to take immediately to optimize retention and development of your top talent:

1. Conduct an employee engagement survey.
Forget satisfaction surveys and measure what really matters-the level of employee engagement. It may be a lot lower than you probably think. Armed with this data, you can implement improvement processes before it is too late. Highly engaged employees are less likely to leave.

2. Accelerate personal development programs.
If you suspended talent development programs at the beginning of the recession to reduce expenses, reinstate them now or a much greater expense will occur-the loss of top performers. Upgrade and personalize any programs you already have in place.

3. Implement a coach-based management and mentoring process.
Coach-based managers are far more effective at developing talent than those without coaching skills. An organized mentoring process for your top talent is a particularly wise investment as you prepare for the economic recovery.

In summary, to ensure that your company retains the top talent it needs to lead the recovery, your employees must be fully engaged and participate in continuous personal development, including the opportunity for coaching and mentoring.

Contact me for a complimentary discussion of the three talent development steps above.

Enthusiastically,

Bob

Bob Moore, CMC®, President
Effectiveness, Inc/The Effectiveness Coach®
Aligning Human Capital with Strategic Objectives

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