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18 Retaining Top Employees

job. With a full-time job, your employer handles all those
other tasks and lets you concentrate on what you are
good at and want to do—the very definition of core com-
petency.
When the money began to dry up and the economy turned
downward, many free agents didn’t have the marketing and
sales skills necessary to get enough work to pay the bills. As
the dot-com era ended in late 2000 and early 2001, many peo-
ple who had tried the free agent option, with varying success,
gradually returned to full-time employee status.
Free Agents and Employee Retention
The rise and fall of the free agent redefined the role of the inde-
pendent worker and is impacting employee retention strategies
in two (complementary) ways:

1. Employers began to see that there are many people
(employees and potential employees) who are free agents
at heart, by their desires, passions, and ambitions. Such
people respond to different “retention stimuli” than the
typical employee, who rarely, if ever, thinks about striking
out alone.
2. It’s now better understood and accepted that many jobs in
an organization (even those that are “core”) need not be
“jobs” at all—they can
readily be transformed into
Free Agents Among
Your Employees assignments that can be
Smart managers recognize performed by independent
that employees and potential employ- contractors. This in turn
ees have changed over the past decade. radically alters the
Many of them are free agents at heart. employee retention equa-
They’re motivated differently—and to tion for those relation-
keep them around you need to treat
ships.
them differently. Later chapters will
offer some suggestions,but it’s up to In Chapter 7 we’ll
you to know your employees and how examine in depth the
they think and feel. impact on employee reten-