The future of every company is directly tied to the quality of talent the organization is capable of attracting and the robustness of its employee retention strategies.
It is practically impossible to build a great company with mediocre talent. Unfortunately though, not every business leader takes employee attraction and retention strategy very seriously. Today, successful businesses are built on a solid culture of continuous innovation and extreme customer focus, both of which can only be delivered by highly talented people.
In a dynamic economy such as we’re in; the old citadel of competitive advantage such as location, price, technology, and distribution channels no longer guarantee sustainable market share position.To build a successful organization, you must be addicted to finding and keeping top talents.
The word talent encompasses numerous meanings, but when it comes to considering what constitutes real business talent, the following five Cs come to mind:
- Competence – In consideration of highly talented person in the market place, the person must possess skills, abilities, ideas, and information that others are willing to pay for. Talented people are lifelong learners, who have insatiable desire to increase their skills and knowledge at every possible opportunity. They avail themselves the opportunity of learning through reading good books, magazines; listening to podcasts, CD, DVDs, and attending seminars, workshops. By practicing these, they make themselves a sponge for new ideas and innovations.
- Character – You can have the smartest person in your team, with the highest performance, yet if he/she isn’t completely trustworthy, you have the highest liability. It is critical for business success that the person who qualifies as a highly talented employee in your organization conducts him/herself with complete transparency and integrity in every situation.
- Collaboration – With the advent of Internet, the world of business is moving at high velocity with too much information for any single individual to handle alone. For you to be effective in any organization, you must be versatile at collaborating with others within and outside your company. You must be a great team player and engage widely in knowledge sharing. You must be willing to submerge your personal ego, and build trust for the success of those around you and your organization as a whole.
- Communication – Whoever that succeeds at a high level, in any organization, is an expert communicator. Fortunately, best communicators are not always the ones with great oratory or persuasive skills; rather the one with the ability to ask superior questions, demonstrates active listening, and understands appropriate body languages. Effective communicators are active listeners. They look for the meaning and emotions behind spoken words, and make the person they are talking to, the center of their universe for that moment. All these skills are essential for talented people to have.
- Commitment – At the root of every great success is great effort. Talented people are committed and hold themselves accountable for their work. They’re passionately driven by what they’re doing. Committed people are resilient; they believe they could find the way out in any task they’re doing. Commitment is the ability to thrive in challenging situations. To succeed in your business, you need the people with this ability. In every employee retention strategy, commitment is a key ingredient to look for.
Many times, I’ve listened to executives talk about how hard it is to find “good people to work with,” and many believe it is impossible to find one.
To win the battle for Best Talent for your organization, you must be a fanatic for discovering, recruiting and implementing performance appraisal system that celebrates highly competent people with impeccable character. They must be people who collaborate really well with other people to make great things happen. You need to find people who are great in communication and have driving commitment for excellence.
Having learned the “5Cs” of talent, how can you put in place a system to find the best talents to accelerate growth of your business?
Below are five employee attraction strategies you can implement easily. Each of these strategies is simple and has powerful lasting effect when implemented. You must proactively consider suitable cost-effective employee retention programs for your organization to maximize the benefits of your great talents.
-Develop a list of at least ten super-talented people you’d love to hire right now if you only had a position available for them.
-Decide now to take one highly talented person you’d like to hire to lunch every month
– You may even like to consider an online employee performance appraisal administered anonymously to bring about a complete transformation in the way you get your employees appraised.
-Engage someone in your company who has strong personal relationship with the top placement officers at all local and regional colleges and universities.
-Develop an internship program that taps promising college students to come in and work with you before they are on the open market.
-Keep a close eye on the talented people who work for your competition.
If you’ve found this article useful, please share your views below.
