According to the Washington-based Corporate Executive Board, nearly 25% of your high achievers may already started actively looking for a new job. That’s compared to only 10% of the broader workforce.
Have you thought about this and how it can impact your business if just some of your high achievers left just as the economy is turning around?
In an earlier post about how much more impact a high performer has on your bottom line vs. an average performer, I talked about studies that show a high performer has 48% greater output than an average performer…they have 96% greater output than non-performers.
I challenge you to put some numbers on paper to see just how losing some of your top performers could affect your bottom line.
What steps should you take to keep your top performers and to cushion the blow should you actually lose some? Here are some that quickly come to mind:
- Focus on retaining your top performers:
- Communicate often about the ways the employee can help the company
- Provide one-on-one coaching by seasoned executives
- Enable them to easily move to other positions in the company
- Keep communicating with everyone inside and outside the company using positive messages.
- Employees need to feel connected to each other and to the company.
- Make sure your executive pay structures are tuned to pay-for-performance…without increasing risk to the employee.
- Be sensitive to work-life balance
- Use a good assessment tool designed to profile your top performers so you can use it identify other employees who have the potential to become top performers. Also, use the profile to screen candidates from the outside.
On this last point–HP uses assessment tools to build “best-in-class profiles” to not only screen for the best external candidates, but to also identify areas for development for their existing high-potential employees. This is one best-practice idea that employers of all sizes can put to use immediately.
Always be thinking about how you can keep your high performers while building a farm team of future high performers.
If you are like many employers I work with, you ‘hunkered down” during the recession. Now is the time for get your team ready to take advantage of the improving business climate. Having top performers engaged in making that happen will differentiate you from your competition. Now is the time to act to retain the ones you have and identify new ones.
Here’s to your success in 2010!
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