Stem The Flow & Keep Your Talent!

Some businesses tend to focus their efforts on their clients when sometimes its best to focus on their teams. As Richard Branson said "Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients."

There are certain times during the calendar year where employees vote with their feet, none more so than at the end of the year. Whether its bonus time or or just time for a fresh start, the question I ask business leaders is "Are your people gearing up for a fresh start to the year with you or with the competition?"

You can usually tell when there may be a few issues when you see a lot of change in the faces that are operating in the business. Sometimes it goes unnoticed by some, but for the people at the cold front it may look like a revolving door.

When you think about how much it costs to recruit someone into an organisation in detail along with the resources it takes those new faces to get up to speed, the figure can be quite eye-watering.

When organisations have aspirations for growth be it organically or through acquisitions, there tends to be a trend in that term 'Replacement Headcount'. Now sometimes its a necessary evil, but sometimes its is entirely preventable. It takes a different approach, a proactive approach. Either way a skilled business leader has an ability to look at their business and work out why the attrition is there in the first place.

One great leader I had the pleasure of working with sums it up in his LI summary when he talks about creating an environment that provides everyone with the nutrients, support and love they need to develop their career and be the best they can be. The proof was that the businesses he led had amazing people and a good culture, yes he had challenges, but he had that innate ability to be open and tackle the challenges that faced him.

There are some questions to ask though if you see a problem, work out who is leaving? is it new starters in their first year? is it existing talent or long standing employees that are moving on? No matter who is leaving, 9 times out of 10 it is likely to be down to the way those employees are influenced and the experience they have.

There is one caveat here though, business leaders need to be open to change and actually want to put their effort into tackling people challenges. It seems obvious to most, but you would be surprised the level of apathy and lack of appetite across some landscapes.

As i mentioned in a previous article, if we expect our people to have the best interest of our business at heart, we should have the best interests of our people in ours. What is the experience of our people when they join? how do we give them what they need to be successful? how do we enable them to be at their best so that as a business we can be at ours?

Having the right partners to help guide you and avoid these pitfalls is key, avoiding these scenarios is obviously preferred, but sometimes you pick it up too late. Sometimes you may not have an HR or a Talent function, sometimes you might have one of those functions but they need supporting themselves (its crazy how under invested these functions are in some businesses). Ultimately its about enabling ourselves as business leaders to prevent (preferably) or resolve (definitely) these challenges where they arise.