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RETAINING YOUR HIGH PERFORMERS: IT’ S A CHALLENGE!
DAVID ESLER Principal, Kaizen Executive
In the past, you may remember me talking about how important it is to attract talented staff. But, even more difficult, is how to retain your top performers and the enormous impact and cost to your business when these talented staff leave. There is no doubt in my mind that the predicted economic conditions in 2017( both buoyant and tight, depending on where you are looking from) are going to pose some real challenges for us. I think we all should be asking ourselves:
“ Is there a better way of engaging and retaining top performing staff?”
When you consider that your high performers are twice as productive as your average performers and the cost to replace top performers is somewhere between half to double their annual salaries, isn’ t it about time that we, as managers, spent more time firstly selecting and then putting our energy into retaining these high performers?
Now, a simple question first,‘ Would you like to increase your operating revenue and margin by 19 per cent in the next 12 to 18 months?’ I am sure that I would...
Tower Perrin / ISR, one of the world’ s premier employee research and consulting firms, conducted what it refers to as one of the most extensive employee engagement studies ever. In ISR’ s own words, the findings were‘ striking’. Companies that put a significant amount of effort into employee engagement and retention enjoyed growth in operating revenue and margin of over 19 per cent. Now that is fairly impressive; and it’ s just by doing some of the simple things well.
So, how do you become an employer of choice and a business that is known for its ability to attract, engage and retain high performing staff? Here are some simple steps that I recommend:
BUILD ROLE BENCHMARKS
Many companies come to me for assistance with recruitment and when I ask them for a position description they look at me a little blank and say,‘ What you talkin about mister?’ How do you know what skill and ability you are looking for if you can’ t tell me what they will be doing! Position descriptions and person specifications make you think about the role and can provide an in-depth review of the successful attributes( education, abilities, traits and interests) required for that individual to be a top performer within your business. Get these things onto paper before you doing anything else so you have a clear understanding of what will make them successful.
TARGETED SEARCH
Traditional job advertisements are all about the employer, not about the candidate, and these are just not cutting it anymore. I have tracked the source of every candidate we have placed since I opened my business nine years ago and thought it a timely reminder of the statistics I spoke about at a conference in November 2016. What I have found is that placements through advertising has gone from 46 per cent to 21 per cent and placements through executive search, social media and networking have increased from 54 per cent to 79 per cent- a massive change and it is not getting any easier to find those top performers. So, my advice is simple, know what you want and take a deliberate approach to finding it.
TEST WHAT THEY SAY
How many times has a candidate said in an interview,‘ Yeah, I understand territory planning and I have a complicated spreadsheet that tells me where I need to be each week,’ and you go,‘ Excellent, you’ re
hired!’ Then, of course they arrive at the office on their first day, you hand them their laptop and they smile sheepishly and say thank you... and of course you find them half an hour later still looking for the‘ on button’. Maybe a little extreme, but it happens. As part of the recruitment process, you need to test what they are saying by using low cost skill and knowledge testing to ensure that time is not wasted with candidates who do not possess the basic skill / knowledge required to perform the task. The cost effectiveness of these skills and knowledge tests means that they can be performed as part of the initial screening process.
CONTINUOUS COACHING AND DEVELOPMENT
Coaching and development of high performers is just as important as finding them in the first place. With recruitment, you will never get a perfect match, so understanding how to coach and develop your high performer can be provided through our JobFit management coaching and development reports. By using our JobFit assessments and matching your final candidates to a high performance benchmark we have developed, you can increase the amount of candidate relevant information coming out of the recruitment process from 26 per cent to 75 per cent. This represents a threefold increase in the success rate of selecting and keeping your top performer. The ability for you to use a robust, proven, valid and reliable assessment system provides your organisation with the ability to better predict the‘ fit’ and subsequent performance of your staff.
For more information, contact David on 0420 905 580 or visit www. kaizenexec. com. au
20 Australian Window Association