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56 Retaining Top Employees

“retain the existing R&D team on Project XYZ intact until the
product certification stage.”
Be sure to distinguish between your goals and the tactics you
will use to achieve those
goals. (We’ll discuss tac-
Employee retention tac-
tics—such things as com-
tics The individual steps
taken to achieve goals. pensation and benefits
Tactics and goals,taken together,form packages, bonuses, perks,
a strategy. status enhancements, big-
ger offices, better commu-
nication, more recognition, mentoring, and coaching—in
Chapters 4, 5, and 6.)
The tactics you’ll use will depend on the goals you establish
in this chapter.
At this stage it’s important to remain focused on the overall
goals of your strategy; thinking about tactics before you’ve set
your goals is rather like putting the cart before the horse.
(However, there’s no harm in noting any tactics that occur to
you while you’re establishing your goals or conducting your
interviews. You never want to lose any ideas!)
The simplest way to summarize your retention goals is to
extend the table we designed earlier, in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-2 shows how the summary interview data is placed
alongside the information collated earlier, with the overall goals
in the right-hand column, together with some brief notes about
specific tactical steps to explore later.
This table is obviously stylized and is a neat, hypothetical
case study, with no loose ends. Your specific situation may well
be rather more complex and you may go through many more
drafts before deciding on a final set of goals. But nonetheless,
the process is the same and the final outcome should be the
same—quantifiable and precise goals.

Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 3
❏ Establish and prioritize the key groups that present a cur-
rent or future retention risk.