Toojays Blog

There's alot of comment in HR circles about the war for talent at the moment with businesses ensuring they keep their workforce engaged and motivated during harsh economic times.

Trying to prevent the Talent drain is a concern. 

But knowing the key facts around aquisition and retention of talent is crucial.

The following infographic on the recent findings from Kelly Services makes for interesting reading

Does your retention strategy take into consideration these points? How does it vary between the Generations?

Failure to engage correctly could be driving your employees away.

To find out more about becoming an employer of choice or how to develop the right retention strategy contact us at   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

So you're thinking of leaving...?

In 2009 a Right Management survey of over 900 north american empoyees found that over 60% were planning to leave their current role.

More recent surveys have indicated that with the continuation of the recession and uncertain economic outlook that this figure is now much higher with employees just waiting for an up turn before they depart.

This is an alarming stat if true and the impact on businesses through this potential talent drain is enough to make the most hard nosed CEO sit up and pay attention.

So what's the solution? and....more importantly who's job is it to stop this loss of employees!

Employee engagement is the key. 

There are numerous postings and articles for EE on the web and the practice is well populated with suggestions for strategic plans and cultural changes to address the problem.

With most of these though the suggestion is that the initiatives and policies should come from HR, Personnel or the Executive Board.

But look at the root causes of why people leave their role and most exit interview data would  suggest it stems from the lack of psychological contract or engagement with their line manager.

Why not then make the line manager accountable?

That's right...set an objective a KPI for the line manager that relates to staff retention rates.

Following the adict that "What get's measured...gets done" - why not ensure that staff retention is focused upon and reduced? 

If the line manager knows their own performance and possibly their performance related bonus will be impacted upon by how engaged they are with their staff then it becomes a higher priority for them.

Metrics can varied but numbers of or percentage of days training given, absenteesism, promotions as well as leavers within a team could monitored as suitable gauges.

Engaging and empowering Line Managers to increase retention and reduce talent loss has to be addressing the issue at the front line.

Time to revisit the objectives you've set??

I recently ran a management training course on Employee Engagement and during the course we discuss how motivating employees during difficult times was so hard.

With financial rewards and pay rises as rare as pixie dust and rocking horse...well you get the idea, the conversation moved on to the pyscological contract and how employees actually got a lot more than they used to.

A question was raised as to how do you stop employees thinking the grass is green elsewhere. Alot of the group agreed with the questioner and the problem facing them.

Whilst most had ensured their payroll was competative there were still employees they felt that weren't fully appreciative of the 'other' benefits they had.

We started to list all the 'additional benefits' their employees received. These ranged from pension contributions,  free lunches, parking, fruit, massages, holiday trading, free buscuits to training and development.

Whilst these were given by the employer they weren't detailed in terms of monetery value.

I recalled how many years ago whilst working for a large corporate we were handed a potfolio of Statements. This document, in addition to outlining the annual salary, pay increases and pension contributions, also detailed how many days of training and development we'd received and how that equated to company average and also actual monetary value.

I was surprised to learn that most of the group didn't demonstrate to their employees all of the additional benefits they received and what was invested in them.

You may not want to work out how many buscuits they've had or free cups of tea over the year...but perhaps in difficult times its worth reminding your employees of the benefits they receive and the amount of training and development you invest in them. 

A simple statement showing the benefits and monetary value invested in them may work!