Key Employees

By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth

Much has been written on the subject of retaining key employees and in my opinion most of it flat misses the mark. In fact, I’ll go so far to say that key employees are not assets but rather large contingent liabilities. If you have stooped to the level of paying retention bonuses or find yourself otherwise being held hostage by those employees who feel like they are indispensable you are only exacerbating the problem. I’m not disputing the need to retain talent and reduce turnover but I am vehemently disputing the conventional wisdom of how most businesses address the risk of managing key employees. In today’s post I’ll give you a fresh perspective on the age old dilemma of how to deal with key employees…

As a CEO or entrepreneur your problem with key employees begins the very second you publicly identify someone as such. The fact that you have a key employee to begin with means that at a minimum you have a lack of transparency and continuity in your organization and more probably that you lack depth of talent and are weak in process and knowledge management.

How would you answer this question…Is your company talent poor and key employee dependant or talent rich or key employee independent? In my book a superstar is not necessarily the same thing as a key employee…There is a monumental difference between real tier-one talent and a primadonna who thinks of themselves as tier-one talent. Employees who represent true tier-one talent see themselves as part of the team seeking to make those around them more successful. Contrast this with those primadonnas who are interested solely in their own success without regard to those around them. Any company that bestows a primadonna with recognition as a key employee is a company about ready to experience a completely avoidable disaster.

Over the years I have learned that no one and I mean no one is indispensable. A well managed company is not dependant upon the performance of any single individual. Those individuals who attempt to hoard knowledge, relationships or resources to attain job security are not to be valued as key, but are to be admonished as ineffective and deemed a liability. Corporate talent that cannot be shared, duplicated, distributed or leveraged is not nearly as valuable as talent that can.

If you want to eliminate dependency on key employees don’t allow any individual to create ultimate domain over anything that is considered key or mission critical. Instead create a culture that values transparency, knowledge management, mentoring, coaching and process. By doing these things you will add both depth and breadth to your organization and increase the overall level of talent across the enterprise.