Nine Tips To Help You Keep Good People

Nine tips that will help you focus your retention strategy and achieve your objective.
Keeping good employees is the name of the employment game these days. While that's always easier said than done, here are nine tips that will help you focus your retention strategy and achieve your objective.

1. Beware of anything that can become an entitlement, because it can become expensive and you may not need it.

2. Develop processes by which people can increase their employability in the areas of competencies, skills and intellectual growth.

3. Use special projects as incentives or rewards.

4. Have a positive corporate environment in which you frequently give out well-considered "thank-yous." They can range from trips to a one-time bonus. These foster employee development.

5. Realize that retention of valued people is a long-term process, not a knee-jerk reaction.

6. Create a consistent corporate culture in which managers communicate corporate vision and values uniformly to employees.

7. Build in rewards for supervisors and managers who keep good people.

8. Use exit interviews to obtain important data that will provide information about your organization.

9. Provide anonymous suggestion programs (that are responded to in some way) to make workers understand their ideas make a difference.



SOURCE: (Points 1-5) Jerry McAdams, National Practice Leader for rewards and Recognition Systems, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, St. Louis, author of "The Reward Plan Advantage" (Jossey-Bass, 1996). (Points 6-9) Naomi Brody, vice president, Langer Associates Inc., New York City

Workforce, August 1997, Vol. 76, No. 8, p. 48.