The Red-Headed Step-child Named Retention

Employee Retention Strategy Can Save Companies Millions

In a recent post on the Risk Management for the 21st Century blog at AllBusiness.com Nancy Germond and I discuss a retention strategy that businesses can employ to minimize risk and help their bottom line by decreasing costs.

With unemployment at one of its highest rates many organizations have let their focus on employee retention slip - with the untapped pool that is consistently being flooded with talent old and new, this action puts your organization at risk and it’s costly. The majority of your current employees look for work elsewhere as economy improves - and even during the turmoil, and the attitude in many organizations is employees are easily replaced, but the costs (and hidden costs) associated with replacing talented employees lead to further problems down the road - risky thinking indeed.

Obviously this can be said with any organization, but the more experienced an employee is the less risky they are and the less risk there is for your organization which makes retention an important step in any organization.

The unique model, which I call The Rethinking Retention Model, bases the retention process on the belief that it should be managed like any other practice: sales, service, quality or safety.

These are some of my recommendations:

• Calculate the cost of turnover to determine how much it hurts your company's bottom line.

• Hold supervisors accountable for retention and teach them the importance of and how to build trust.

• "Narrow the front door to close the back door.”

• Carefully script the employee's first 90 days on the job.

• Develop a “Stay Plan”

• Build tools to connect with employees.

• Allow Candidates to Screen Themselves Out

• Hold employment vendors to retention standards.

• Hire Older Workers

• Use a referral system - current employees refer candidates for three reasons.

In today's economic climate, organizations can no longer ignore retention strategies if they want to retain their top talent, and retention is critical to any company's bottom line - and retaining talent is even harder. With the use of my strategy I was able to help one hospital cut nurse turnover by 34%, effectively them millions.

You can read the entire posting by clicking here.

For more information on my work, visit www.TheRetentionFirm.com or http://www.retentioninstitute.com/.