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32 Retaining Top Employees

exactly. Great golfers take time to consider exactly where they’re
going to hit the ball, taking into account how the contours of the
course will affect the way the ball will bounce and roll.
It’s the same for your retention program: the better you can
specify the exact results you wish to achieve, the closer you’ll
come to achieving them and the more likely your interventions
will make a positive, sustainable difference in retaining key
employees.
Acquiring Local Knowledge
In picturing golf shots, there’s a great benefit in what’s termed
“local knowledge.” Golfers who are playing on their home
course know every bump and hollow, so they’re able to picture
their shots much more accurately than golfers who’ve never
played that course before.
It’s much the same with employee retention. It’s one thing to
just toss a retention initiative into the work environment and
hope for a positive effect. It’s quite another to fully understand
the “bumps and hollows” of your organization, the “local knowl-
edge” that ensures your retention-related activities have the
right effects.
The best way to acquire local knowledge of a golf course is
to play it, over and over again. Visiting golfers don’t have that
opportunity, so they do something called “walking the course.”
Before a tournament, professional golfers will walk every inch of
the course, practicing shots from every angle, playing every
bump and hollow, testing
Walk the Course the course to see how it
To better understand your responds to different shots
work environment,to get the and in different conditions.
“lay of the land,” talk with your
The more successful the
employees.What makes them want to golfer, the more time he or
stay around? What might cause them
to feel less at home? What might even- she will have spent testing,
testing, testing.
tually cause them to leave? The more
perspectives you get,the better you For you, the equivalent
can understand your environment. to “walking the course” is