As the world becomes more and more specialised, with less and less ‘Jack-Of-All-Trades’ around, it seems inevitable that stand out employees will come along. These are the people that are generally so good at what they do the very thought of replacing them is offensive. If you are a manager, you will no doubt know exactly who these people are and what strengths and weaknesses each of them have and despite the old cliché that everyone is replaceable, the reality is that you want to keep this employee around. So how do you go about it?
Now before jumping into some of the methods that can be followed to help keep a hold of these employees it is important to recognise that all employees are different and no hard and fast rule applies. It is crucial to managing people effectively that this is taken into consideration and different people and personalities can respond very differently under certain circumstances.
One common rule does apply however and it is surprisingly simple in thought, but much harder in execution. It is the old ‘Giving Credit Where Credit is Due’. Recognition and appraisal for going above and beyond the call of duty is always a great thing for an employee to hear and be it in a public forum, such as the employee of the month, or a private reward, such as a gift voucher or a treat to dinner, a very small outlay while this employee is still in your hands can have a huge impact on the persons loyalty to that organisation.
So what else can you do beyond the old standard of noting the hard workers and rewarding? To be able to effectively reward those that are truly deserving, your business needs to have designated Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the various positions within your organisation. Without a KPI against which to measure the performance of employees, you are simply going on memory and are essentially guessing. If you do not have KPIs in place currently then it is certainly advised that you look at implementing such as to allow for the measure of employee performance. The implementation of KPIs also often allows for much greater budget control as performance is more closely tracked.
With KPIs in place and recognition where due, you are probably wondering what else can be done to hold onto these employees? Ultimately the size and structure of your company dictates this however more and more businesses are starting to offer flexible hours, work from home and work by the task.
Flexible work hours’ is of course fairly self-explanatory and allows for employees to select from approved start and finish times. You can even allow employees to start at different times on each day of the week. This can be particularly useful for parents and families who sometimes need to be late one day on the week due to commitments but then need to be leaving early on a different day in the week.
Work from Home also seems fairly self-explanatory and could loosely be referred to as a ‘cloud’ company, as the employee work from where they are and all materials are stored on a secure online network. This type of setup may seem scary and somewhat concerning to managers but ultimately if you have your KPI in place to measure the performance against does it really matter if this employee is sitting next to you in the office or at home?
The final option ‘Work By The Task’ is almost unheard of in the business world but actually extremely common in the trade and manual labour industries. This is where an employee is hired to complete a set task. They are paid a salary based on the work they are required to perform and if they are able to complete all work for the week within 20 hours… then they only work 20 hours. 20 hours is a somewhat extreme example however the same principle applies to 30 hours. This may seem very strange to some managers however this needs to be thought about and very carefully before instant dismissal.
If an employee can complete all tasks in 20 hours to the same level as someone that requires 40 hours in the week, then allowing the employee to go home early reduces the amount of electricity usage through less computers / kitchen appliances, reduces wear and tear on computers due to a reduction in operating times and keep your top employees happy as they have the flexibility of knowing that they can come to work, do a job well and leave knowing that they have done this well and are being looked after.
Now many managers may at this point turn around and be thinking “but if my best employee can get twice the work done in a week as my other workers then great.” This is not the way to keep a hold of this employee and while they may stick around and enjoy the work for a while, the reality of it is that the role is ultimately doomed to be vacant at which point you have to factor in costs for training and replacing that employee.
Is higher electricity costs, increased hardware usage and constant training costs really worth that extra few hours from your top employees or are you better off looking after them?