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Can't Just Get Them, You Have To Keep Them
The following excerpted article was submitted by Beverly Kaye and
Sharon Jordan-Evans, employee-retention experts and co-authors of
Love Em or Lose Em: Getting Good People to Stay. Kaye will speak
at The HR Forum this May 9-12.
With company loyalty down and workers looking out for their own
best interests, keeping good talent has become a primary objective
for many companies. According to 25 global talent leaders, representing
Fortune 500 companies, who recently gathered at Career Systems
International's 2nd Annual Retention Convention, the war for talent
is not only as hot as ever, itıs also moving into new territories.
To compound the challenge, todayıs employee has shifted his self-perception
from the role of corporate asset to a new role of investor.
Employees now look at their careers as an investment of their energy
and time and they want to see a meaningful return on their investment.
If they donıt, they lose interest, performance and productivity
drops, and, eventually, they take their investment elsewhere. Retention
and engagement have become inseparable Ż both are vital elements
to talent management, and both directly affect the bottom line.
A critical strategy involves instilling a talent management mindset
among leaders while building internal cultures designed to keep,
engage and grow talent. Itıs important to explore cradle-to-grave
initiatives that will extend the employee life cycle. Cutting-edge
companies have:
- Begun to focus on the on-boardingprocess of new employees.
The goal is to convert that initial welcome handshake and attitude
from why they came to why they'll stay.
- Heightened their focus on building a learning and development
culture.
- Implemented mentoring programs, supplemented by legacy planning,
to protect and share the irreplaceable historical knowledge of
their workforces.
- In addition, retention-savvy organizations acknowledge the
challenge of leading and engaging the four generations now in
the workforce and they are employing innovative approaches to
solving this dilemma.
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