Page 22 - Retaining Top Employees

McKeown01.qxd 4/13/02 8:05 AM Page 10

10 Retaining Top Employees

delegated authority)
• Recognition (promotion, fast-track programs, employee
of the month programs, award programs)
• Fulfillment and self-development (lifelong learning pro-
grams, funded education programs, sabbaticals)

Don’t Grow Employee Retention Weeds!
When you understand that effective employee retention goes
beyond simply adjusting compensation and benefits, you can
avoid the most common, costly, and least effective approach to
employee retention—the “employee retention weed garden.”
This is the syndrome of trying to improve employee retention,
only to find that the problem comes back worse than before.
Here are the basic steps:
1. An organization recognizes that it has an employee
turnover problem.
2. The organization sets up a task force, does some bench-
marking, and revises its compensation and benefits pack-
ages (rightly addressing the lowest, most basic level of the
employees’ hierarchy of needs).
3. The organization sees a temporary (12- to 24-month)
reduction in its employee turnover problem.
4. Employees, now that their basic needs are being met, nat-
urally begin to seek fulfillment of their higher needs—
acceptance, esteem, fulfillment, and self-development.
The demand increases for interesting projects, meaningful
relationships with managers and colleagues, and a clear
career path.
5. Faced with such demands, the senior managers feel that
their employees, whose compensation and benefits have
just been substantially improved, should be grateful and
happily and productively engaged in their assigned tasks
and not militating for yet more perks.
6. Embittered, the senior managers vow to “never be trapped
by this employee retention malarkey again.” Employees will
be paid appropriate to the job and that’s it. Conceding on