As an employer, it is one’s task to recognize the hard work of their employees, along with their endless support for the company, successful productivity, and countless overtime just to finish the whole project for the month. It may sound easy enough; however, key employees are often overlooked and disregarded, resulting in their loss of enthusiasm on the job. If that isn’t bad enough, they will definitely look for an alternative future – with a different company. With that in mind, here are just a few ways how to retain your employees, especially if they are the key players in the company:
1) Manage your compensation well. Get it right the first time.
Compensations are what your employees work for, day and night. This doesn’t mean that it is all they ever care about, since the improvement of skills and acquisition of work experience would also come into play, however, one must remember that they also have to make a living, and if you’re not providing your employees the right amount of compensation that they deserve, they may very well be already on their way out. Consider this, some employers would only offer a raise by the time that their key players are heading for the door, and it may already be too late at that point.
2) Be mindful of the right “market pay,” and the indicators that you may need to add more.
Always pay market or above as soon as you can afford it, at least for the key employees. Keep this real-life story in mind, heard from an actual CEO: “He lost a top up-and-coming engineer, who was making a five-figure salary, to a really boring company that doubled her salary. That boring company had to. How else can a boring company steal a star engineer from a hot startup? The answer is lots of money.” It may have seemed unfair, but remember this, it’s a sign of respect. And most of the time, the key employees won’t ask, they’ll just eventually get frustrated and leave. “Pay market, or above, as soon as you can.”
3) If you feel that they had already accepted an interview from another company, you may still intervene and try to patch things up.
Take note of your employee’s frustrations on their social media posts, and be on the lookout for their new LinkedIn connections as well. If they seem to be on leave most of the time or are taking private calls during lunch hours (more than the usual) then they may already be entertaining interview appointments. The good news is, you can still intervene, if you can fix whatever the issue is, you can still keep him or her in the job. Never ignore the signs.
