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44 Retaining Top Employees

Future Risks
Our biotech company may have a perfectly acceptable rela-
tionship with its group of key R&D scientists,but it would
be exceptionally vulnerable if those employees decided to leave the
organization,individually or as a group.
Since they remain dedicated and loyal while working on Project
XYZ, they may never appear on the “squeaky wheel,” “obvious gap,” or
“follow the money” scorecards. But deep in their departmental VP’s
subconscious,there may well lurk a fear about what would happen if
they all decided to leave.

Why Do You Want to Retain the Targeted
Employees?
Now, it may seem that I’m specializing in stupid questions in the
chapter, but the next question to ask, after you’ve identified
your key retention groups, is “Why do you want to retain
them?”
There are almost always two answers to this question:
• Resources: it’s too expensive, in cash and time, to hire a
top performer every few months.
• Recruitment: top employees are hard to get.
While these reasons are usually valid, it’s important to
check for any additional operational reasons for focusing on a
key retention group. Uncovering additional reasons at this point
will enable you to plan your retention strategy for maximum
impact. Consider the following two examples.
Example: The Knowledge Management Need
In the case of the biotech company with R&D scientists, the
underlying issue faced by the organization, beyond the cost and
effort of replacing key employees, is knowledge management.
The company is extremely vulnerable to the loss of institutional
knowledge if the members of the project team choose to leave,
individually or as a group. It’s important that the retention strat-
egy for the key chemists also address the issue of trapping and
managing the vital information that the chemists are generating