In order to find a suitable replacement for a very good employee who is leaving the company, companies have to spend a lot of time and resources with no guarantee of being able to fill the position with the same level. Accordingly, corporations should ensure that they do not lose important employees.
It is often not enough to keep courted employees in your own company through monetary top-ups; rather, they should be shown even more profound appreciation.
Open communication
Constant communication with the employee not only expresses appreciation, but also shows interest. On the one hand, the company learns more about the employee’s goals, on the other hand, the employer can respond better to the employee’s wishes and suggestions with regular exchange.
“It sounds banal, but in the end you have to talk to your employees,” commented expert Dominic Multerer in an interview with t3n. Accordingly, the company should always be open to discussions, all year round and not just sporadically at the end or beginning of the year. “It is important to respond to individual wishes. […] The conversation shouldn’t be a must,” adds Multerer.
Regular communication also includes responding to the employee’s comments and suggestions. If suggestions from a good employee are rejected without reason, this depresses the morale of the employee and the company runs the risk of losing them to competing companies in the medium term.
Because even executives make wrong decisions or sometimes act questionable, explains the personnel consultant Jörg Knoblauch to t3n. “A manager is not infallible,” says Knoblauch. Therefore, companies should give their key employees an incentive to make suggestions for improvement.
Create transparency and incentives
The employees are a significant part of the company structure and planning. You are directly affected by decisions, project plans and strategies. Accordingly, good employees should also be involved in important decisions in advance and not always be presented with a fait accompli. Leadership and management should speak openly about plans and changes and allow input and feedback from key employees.
When company management plays with open cards and initiates the employees into the planning at an early stage, a sense of belonging develops between the employee and the company, explains Multerer.
This also includes setting new incentives and discussing them openly with the employee. For example, good performance should always be rewarded, but not every employee wishes to be promoted or better rewarded. Garlic explains, “There are people who respond to gifts, there are people who respond to kind words.” This means that the appreciation shown can have many faces, some employees are happy to be promoted with more responsibility and correspondingly higher pay. Other employees don’t want to move up in rank, but would still appreciate a higher salary or simply appreciate honest praise.
Knoblauch explains that it’s not always about extravagant rewards or thanks, but rather regular praise for good presentations or the like.
Meet employees on a personal level
Only when a manager meets his employees on a personal level can they understand their wishes or concerns. So it is the job of a supervisor to know the mood of the employee, says Multerer. This concept works in the same way as open communication, but on a different level. In personal conversations that are not about projects and business, a manager learns a lot about the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the employees.
With regular listening and personal exchange, companies can ensure at an early stage that possible problem areas are eliminated and that good employees continue to be bound to the company.
This also includes, for example, consulting employees before hiring new colleagues and team members. This often not only improves the working atmosphere, but also promotes the productivity of the team. When employees and new colleagues harmonize, this promotes morale and helps to bind good employees to the company in the long term.
Henry Ely / Editor finanzen.net
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