Page 74 - Retaining Top Employees

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62 Retaining Top Employees

• Work environment
• Work content
• Growth opportunities
• Compensation and rewards
• The organizational culture
• Work relationship with manager
• Work relationship with peers

Let’s briefly summarize what we mean by each.
Work Environment
Right at the core of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, work environ-
ment is a crucial factor in retention. For employees who stay
with an organization for any length of time, the work environ-
ment (together with the organizational culture) is likely to be the
biggest constant in their daily lives. Work content can change,
compensation and benefits can change, relationships with peers
can change, but for most people the “look and feel” of the physi-
cal space in which they work will remain pretty much the same.
Issues such as dress code, the ability to “individualize” their
working environment, and even the physical location of their
workspace vary from one demographic group to another, but at
heart, for everyone, the issue is the ability to work in a pleasant
environment.
Work Content
First or second in practically every poll or survey on retention
issues for top employees is the content of the work itself—that
is, assignments or projects and associated performance goals.
Particularly for top employees, who have a reasonable
expectation that they were not hired to complete repetitive,
uninspiring tasks, the planning of work content to satisfy per-
sonal and career aspirations is an essential element of any
effective retention strategy. Whether Boomer, Gen-Xer, or any-
thing else, top-performing employees have little patience for
being stuck in what they perceive as “dead-end” jobs with
assignments that are limited or—worse—unplanned and
unstructured.