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Keeping Talent – Aligning Leadership Mindsets to Retain Talent

In this part of the talent management series, we focus on keeping talent. Debbie Craig and John Gatherer take the concept of a “great place to work” and the 5 GREATS to a practical level of including the annual talent review process to keep track of your talent pools, emerging stars, manage underperformers and to address barriers and opportunities to attract and retain talent.

by Debbie Craig and John Gatherer

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
	Debbie Craig is the Managing Director of Catalyst Consulting and John Gatherer is the Chief Operations Officer at Catalyst Consulting. For more information, please contact Debbie on 082-872-5429 and Debbie@catalystconsulting.co.za or John on 083-709-8222 and John@catalystconsulting.co.za or visit http://www.catalystconsulting.co.za/

Talent retention is the single most critical area of talent management and an area where the effort is well worth the reward. Ironically, the effectiveness of your employee retention is also the best indicator of how well your talent management strategy is working!

So much has been written about talent retention; publications are riddled with practical advice and wisdom to help struggling organisations combat high attrition rates in times of great uncertainty and skills shortages. There are also numerous research studies demonstrating the business case for investing in employee retention. If you Google the subject, you will find a plethora of articles  lamenting a variety of approaches on retention: 10 ways to keep your best skills, 7 ways to improve talent retention, top tips to address employee turnover, using humour to retain employees, the power of positive recognition, the list is endless.

Our aim is to share some practical advice and tips for keeping talent that work in the real world (even in tough times) and assist you in answering the following questions:

	How attractive are you as an employer to new and current employees? Do your employees know exactly what is expected from them? How well is your corporate culture expressed in the workplace? What is the tenor and style of leadership? How do you recognise and incentivise your employees?

Employee turn on’s and turn off’s A critical issue for today’s talented individuals is choosing what kind of organisation they want to work for. Steve Drotter, who co-authored the book The Leadership Pipeline says that, “every employee is entitled to a good boss and a good job!” There are many factors influencing employee performance and satisfaction in an organisation: the environment, organisational culture, leadership, team dynamics and the individual’s own skills and attitudes. It is a challenging mix of factors to cope with. Individuals will have a far better chance to optimise their potential and compete effectively with skills and talent from around the world, if they are working in an organisation that promotes the “great place to work” mindset.

We have often engaged client companies in an interesting exercise by asking young high potentials or leadership groups to list what their “turn on’s” and “turn off’s” are. It’s a gap analysis with an insightful collective view of areas creating irritation, frustration, dysfunction, as well as features of positivity, credibility and accomplishment.

 Missed an article? You find it under “Talent Management” in our archives.

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