Develop Your Best People or Lose Them -Tinderbox Business Development

Develop Your Best People or Lose Them

Got some talented people in your team? People who you would not like to lose to your competition? Definitely want to keep them?

Keeping good people in the current employment market is getting tougher. They have access to and will be contacted with lots of other opportunities offering (potentially) the things that you as a business have failed to do so far.

So here are a few strategies that, if deployed, give you a better chance of keeping the people you most need to:

Get them connected to the business

Ensure that they feel a part of the business and that they understand how important their role is in the company achieving its goals. Show them how they can make a real difference – in short give them a role – not a job.

Encourage constant improvement

And be prepared to embrace failure as a learning mechanism. Celebrate wins!

Offer tangible benefits

This isn’t about sky high salaries but offer some small benefits that may not cost the earth but mean a lot – discount from the local café on lunches, fresh fruit and drinks available in the office and other ideas that make the work environment a better place to be and an enjoyable experience.

Measure and reward objectively

Too few SME’s set measurable objectives and goals for their people – this results in remuneration rewards – e.g. the annual salary increase – being pretty much the same for all. It shouldn’t be. If you focus on agreeing measurable and specific objectives with employees at the start of a period, you can legitimately and fairly reward those with the best performance more generously. Just giving everyone the same is likely to unfairly discriminate against the best people while making moving out poor employees more difficult. Keep an eye on overheads of course but reward the best performers well.

Treat everyone fairly

As an equally important member of the team. There is no place for favouritism if you want to retain key people. Managers should pay attention to all employees and ensure that there is a regular check in with them all.

Provide ample training opportunities

People will feel valued if they see that the business invests in them. The more regular learning opportunities are provided the more valued good people will feel. Whether its digital training or in person people are far less likely to leave a company that takes their personal development seriously.

Hold regular review meetings

Not the dreaded annual review favoured by many!! Regular reviews deal with issues as they arise and avoids the lasting effects of letting them fester. Focus on performance management – at whatever frequency you need to – weekly, monthly but certainly not annually or quarterly!!

Businesses have a habit of blaming staff members for their decision to leave the business, but most leavers are only doing so because better opportunities lie elsewhere. The reality is that, unless there are deep rooted problems within your business, most people would rather stay – you are just not giving them a good enough reason to do so!!! As previously mentioned with a fiercely competitive market offering numerous job opportunities for good people, your employees need to feel fully valued if you are to prevent their exit and them landing at the door of a competitor.

If you want to know how Tinderbox can help you retain your best people, get in touch with us at ignite@tinderboxbusinessdevelopment.co.uk or call us on 0116 232 5231.

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The Tinderbox Team