Page 40 - Retaining Top Employees

McKeown02.qxd 4/13/02 8:07 AM Page 28

28 Retaining Top Employees

Now, don’t get me
Make It Real
wrong. I’m not against
As you make notes while
working through this book, strategies. In fact, this
don’t think in terms of just building a book is entirely directed to
“retention strategy.” People don’t helping you construct an
respond to strategies; they respond employee retention strate-
to what’s behind them.Think about gy. But if the strategy
how you can genuinely make your
doesn’t result in real, sus-
organization a place where people tained changes in the
feel at home.As you adopt and adapt
tips and techniques from this book to organizational culture,
build that environment,you will end then it will fail. A retention
up with more than a retention strate- strategy that doesn’t
gy.You’ll end up with a retention cul- impact the organization is
ture—a retention way of life. simply an attempt to
manipulate employees—
and it’s doomed to failure.
Let’s face it: employees don’t care about “retention strate-
gies.” What they care about is staying somewhere they feel at
home.
People Stay Where They Feel at Home

I’ve already used this phrase in the previous section and will do
so again, many times: people stay where they feel at home. This
phrase is at the heart of effective retention.
Think about that “significant other.” Think about your
employees. Think about yourself, in your own job at present. Do
any of these people—including you—stay where they are now
because of a “retention strategy”? No.
People stay where they feel at home. As we’ll show later,
this applies to everyone you hire—from the most loyal, compa-
ny-centered employee to the most ruthless, money-oriented
mercenary you employ. We all stay where we feel at home.

Retention Isn’t Compulsion
The approach of many ineffectual retention strategies is “people
will stay if we make them feel at home.”