How To Manage Talent

As the economy begins to show signs of improvement, many businesses are worried about losing their most talented employees. While an employer’s impulse might be to demand higher productivity as the economic environment improves, they should be considering how training and incentives can keep some of their best performing team members happy. Rewarding employees for sticking through the bad times, and giving them time to gain momentum is the best way of ensuring their loyalty.

Economic recovery can often trigger shifting roles within companies, so often it can pay to try to keep track of how happy your employees are in their roles. Obviously you can’t stalk them or hack into their emails, but do your best to correctly gage their happiness, particularly if they are one of your key team members.

Incentives are a great way of keeping your best workers, even though under-achievers are unlikely to ever receive any bonuses. They can help redress salary issues without the need for complicated appraisals full of paperwork and speculation.

If the worst happens, and your talent does start to jump ship, then you should have candidates on file to take their place. You never know when you might need to hire someone urgently, so when you receive applications ensure that you hold onto the all-important details. By keeping these up your sleeve you increase your bargaining power with the employees you fear might leave.

Managing talent is about long term success of a business, minimising the risk posed by staff walking out the door and ensuring that new people with the right skills are in a position to take over in the future. As the economy improves it is natural that more and more talent is poached, so talent management is all about keeping them or finding suitable replacements.

Adam Cairn writes on a number of subjects including mobile workforce management and mobile project and facilities management.