Today your top employee is handsomely compensated, outperforming his cohorts, and leaving the office each evening with a smile. That he’ll be back again repeating the same business-driving patterns tomorrow is something you take for granted. But should you?
The best performers in any industry often remain highly productive, even as their interest in your organization begins to wane. It’s part of their makeup and work ethic, and we admire them for it. But this aspect of their nature also carries the potential to blindside us when we’re caught off guard by a sudden resignation.
To minimize the risk of your superstars bolting, we recommend the following retention strategies:
- Relieve superstars of tedious work
Superstar employees are defined by their ability to set goals and tenaciously work toward their completion. One obstacle to their success typically frustrates them more than any other is being bogged down with cumbersome grunt work. Sure, all work involves some administrative tasks, but if you’re serious about retaining top talent, offload this work to administrative personnel or even a virtual assistant.
- Provide performance metrics
The average employee can be optimally motivated by compliments and other subjective measures of success, but your superstars need more. They need absolute proof that their talents and capabilities are being optimized, and that they are making a difference to your business. Empower them with metrics that provide a true gauge of performance and the tools for continuous improvement. Metrics enable superstars to compete with themselves when they are outpacing their peers.
- Vary the performance goals
Superstars tire of chasing the same “carrots,” month after month. They crave a diverse diet of performance goals, so find new ways of challenging them and more complex rewards systems that provide a choice of challenges. This leads to the next strategy.
- Assign stretch goals
Consider the responsibilities of your superstars’ superiors, including your own and anyone else who is a grade-level above them. Assign “stretch goals,” enabling them to take on challenges normally reserved for executives. Whether you tout a stretch goal as an informal promotion opportunity or not, this is the kind of challenge superstars are often attracted to when they leave one company for another. If you don’t stretch them to their fullest potential, someone else will.
- Offer work-life balance incentives
Your hardest-working employees may seem like machines, but they are not. To keep them operating at peak efficiency, they need to recharge their batteries—arguably more often than average employees. This is true even when they don’t seem to value personal time off. So consider offering bonus time off incentives, bonus vacation pay, and even the option to work from home one or two days each week.
With proactive retention strategies in place, you can keep your business humming and your superstars’ morale high enough that a sudden resignation will become unlikely.
Learn more about employee retention strategies in Hire and Retain Talent by Offering a Superior Work-Life Balance.