How to Hire and Retain Key Employees

As we start to experience an upswing in the economy, key employees are starting to jump ship and look for what they perceive are better employment opportunities or venture out on their own. This can put a tremendous strain on your business. This problem can be avoided in just a few simple steps, and it starts with the hiring process, and ends with the retaining activities.

Know What You Are Looking For: The first step in hiring great employees is to know exactly what you are looking for. Have you created a simple but clear outline of your organization to determine who the key players are? Many times in my work with business owners, I see hiring decisions being made out of order. As a result, the owner takes on additional labor costs without really addressing the most important needs of the company. One of the tools we use is Wealth Dynamics which helps with getting the right person in the right seat on the bus.

Create a complete position description: Your next step will be to write a position description that supports two things; the reason for the position and the kind of person best suited to be successful in this position. Notice I said ‘successful’ as opposed to just ‘filling’ the position. It’s a fine line with a huge difference in outcome. Don’t just hire to fill an open spot, hire to upgrade your team by bringing on truly ‘success’ minded individuals.

Plan Your Recruiting Activity: Recruiting efforts do not have to be all-encompassing. If you distribute your employment opportunity in the right way, you can create an efficient, orderly means of finding the right person without having to shift your focus away from your normal duties. One should always be looking for good people. Hiring is a process, not a singular event out of necessity.

Conduct a Thorough Interview Process: Interviewing is where most business owners fall down in the recruiting process. There are numerous books written about all kinds of interview techniques and systems. Most don’t work because great employment candidates have read them too and know how to play the game as well.

Have an ‘On-Boarding’ Plan For Your New Hire: Once you have made your decision and the candidate has accepted your offer, the most important part of bringing on a new employee starts now. It’s called ‘on-boarding’ and it’s how you orient your new hire into your business. Training is essential.

Monitor Their Performance: You can only ‘expect’ what you ‘inspect’. The purpose of monitoring the new employee’s performance is to catch mistakes early. They may be proficient in their craft but they still need to learn how you do things. They also need to learn how you represent yourself to your customers. Setting 30, 60 and 90 day review meetings to go over their work and discuss how they are doing goes a long way to a great employee. Once you determine that they are fully capable of doing the work unsupervised, give them space and let them work. This doesn’t mean you don’t oversee what they do. You just do it from a distance.

Make Them Feel Like Valued Contributors: Great employees want to know they are contributing at a great level than just the job they perform. They want to know that the company is stronger, more competitive and better to work for as a result of their efforts. For this reason, find ways to make them feel valuable.

Set Clear Work Expectations: Great employees like to know they are meeting and exceeding work standards. It’s not a show of superiority; it’s something they pride themselves on. For this reason, have clear work objectives, guidelines and standards is key to helping them drive their own productivity. It also enables you to measure what they do versus other employees. There’s no better way to lose a great employee than to have them think that superior work is not recognizable from subpar work.

Communicate Openly and Regularly: One of the best ways to create a sense of purpose, value and loyalty is by communicating with your employees on a regular basis. The reason this works well is because people naturally want to know what’s going on around them. Set up regular meetings.

Invite Feedback: As mentioned above, encouraging feedback can have tremendous benefits to the health and operation of your company. Most employees are conditioned to provide feedback when asked. And even then, depending on their experience with speaking their mind, they may be guarded about what they say. Encourage them to offer up their opinions and insights when the time is right. They are the people on the front lines of your business and can keep you informed of potential problems. Great employees love this as it gives them the opportunity to help shape the company’s direction. It doesn’t mean you have to accept everything people suggest but the fact that you listened and supported the feedback means you will benefit from what they see and know.

Recognize What They Do Right: The perception of traditional management is that employees only hear about things they are doing wrong. And candidly, most managers or supervisors are not trained to do anything else. If you want to make a huge impression with your best employees (even all employees) acknowledge them when they do things right! A little praise from the boss when they least expect it can send motivational ripples throughout your company.

Build Trust: Building trust with your team is essential to having them go above and beyond their job requirements to deliver the required performance that’s needed. Much of the areas above will build a solid foundation of trust between you and all your employees.

Offer ‘Perks’ in Addition to Competitive Pay: While pay is not the most important aspect to a great employee, it is necessary to make sure they are competitively compensated. Should you find yourself below market and want to insure they stay with you as opposed to chasing better offers from your competitors, add ‘perks’ to their package.

Promote Professional Development: Regardless of their position or tenure, great employees are always looking to improve. By making professional development part of your program, you encourage them to learn new skills so they can apply them to your business. Remember, great employees want to know they have value to your organization and the best way to demonstrate value is to invest in them.

Make Your Hiring and Retention Plans Work Together You’ve probably seen a common theme running through the hiring and retention strategies presented above. If you think about the outcome you want and create a plan to operate this way ongoingly, you will have the best chance of retaining your existing great employees while you add to them as you go.

To request our free eBook on Hiring and Retaining Great Employees, click here. It’s a short easy to read guide that teaches you what you need to know to plan your hiring better.

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Happy Marketing!

–Kimberly Estrada, Publisher Please call 949.478.5991 if you have any questions.