It’s almost impossible to be in business today without being a digital company to some degree. And for a variety of reasons, there aren’t enough good tech employees to fill all of those digital roles.
Because of this shortage in capable tech talent, companies that retain their best employees have an edge over those that don’t. This has always been the case, but it is now truer than ever. You must either create a positive environment that attracts and retains employees or watch them file out the door toward better opportunities.
6 Areas for Mitigating Talent Risk
Roles in the workplace are evolving. For HR professionals, this means more strategic business objectives as HR gets a bigger say in the direction of the company.
For other managers in the office, this means old HR duties (like standard performance reviews) fall to them. While letting department leaders manage their own employees is a great step, everyone needs to be aware of the potential risks when it comes to finding talented people and keeping them engaged at work.
To make sure great employees flock toward your business and stay there, pay close attention to these six areas to mitigate talent risk:
1. Change
Don’t underestimate the benefits of speedy change — the more quickly your new initiative becomes the norm, the better off your business will be.
Change can’t happen quickly unless you have the right people in place. To make change happen within your organization, you need change agents, advocates within your workforce who support your ideas and work to make others around them see the benefits. These change agents allow your business to move forward without losing valuable employees who might start looking elsewhere if they feel management is moving forward without them.
2. Communication
Analyze whether your employees are communicating effectively or whether something is holding back your progress.
Who’s talking to whom, what are they saying, and how do you know? Annual performance reviews won’t cut it, but asking questions will. Speak with your employees to map out who talks to one another (and what projects they talk about) to understand the flow of information in your business.
Evaluate your communication medium as well. Many businesses today boast about their town hall meetings, but some employees prefer to communicate via officewide chat software rather than in front of a lot of people. If you don’t cater to the way people like to communicate, communication will be stifled.
3. Retention
You probably already have great people; you just don’t know them well enough yet. Perhaps you’re putting too much energy and focus into the people who don’t drive results and not enough into those making real progress. The surest way to drive away high performers is to reward low performers for their bad habits.
4. Retirement
This doesn’t refer to your retirement plan for your employees (although you want them to like that, too). Instead, this refers to potential problems when important people in your organization retire. Will you have to deal with a mass retirement event at some point? Do you have clear succession plans when senior managers retire, and do employees know your backfill policy?
While this may not have as much impact as the three previous areas, ignoring small problems early could cause massive ones later.
5. Security
Do your employees protect data and follow protocols? If you suffer a data breach or have outdated security standards, your employees who are keen enough to take notice might decide to take their talents elsewhere if they feel you don’t protect their (or the business’s) information properly.
6. Role
You might have brilliant people underperforming because they’re in the wrong roles. Nothing frustrates an employee with great potential more than tedious or unrewarding work. Ensure your managers have regular conversations about the career paths of your employees, and encourage honesty so your employees aren’t afraid to say they could fulfill different functions better than their current ones.
If you create the right environment, you won’t have to worry about losing your best employees. Watch these six factors, and strive continuously to improve each one so you not only retain your own talent, but you also attract the talent of your competitors.
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