Page 67 - Retaining Top Employees

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Envisioning Your Retention Strategy 55

Designing Interview Templates
If you sit down with a blank sheet of paper to design an
entry,exit,or other interview,it can be a daunting experi-
ence. However,with the profusion of information on the Internet,you
can find literally hundreds of examples to use as a starting point for
designing your own.
Go to any of the Web sites mentioned earlier in this chapter that
offer Web-based surveys and you’ll find an “employee survey” tem-
plate. Or fire up your favorite search engine and key in “exit inter-
view.” (You’ll even find sites that offer advice to employees on how to
conduct themselves in exit interviews!)
With the Internet,the difficulty of starting with that blank sheet of
paper is replaced by the difficulty of choosing among the hundreds of
examples available.

Turning Data into Achievable Retention Goals
Having worked through this chapter, you now know:
• Who you want to retain
• Why you want to retain them
• What you need to do to retain them

The final step at this stage is to turn that information into a
set of achievable employee retention goals.
You should set goals that are quantifiable and precise.
You’ve got to quantify what you want in order to be able to
measure your progress. The more precise your goals are, the
better you can measure the success of your efforts. If
your goal is “reduce
turnover among senior tax Employee retention
managers,” for example, or goals The broad state-
“retain the existing R&D ment of what you would like
to achieve for each key retention
team,” you’re going to
group.Your goals should be as quantifi-
have trouble measuring
able and precise as possible.
your progress—or even
deciding on your tactics.
You need to refine those general goals: “reduce turnover among
senior tax managers from 34% to 10% in a two-year period” or