Talent Retetion - Hard work for Bosses

One of the most important skills a business manager had to learn in the first decade of 2000 was Retention of employees. This skill was not too much prevalent in India till the year 2000. People stayed in jobs for decades in all the three sectors; Govt. , public and private. Though the lifelong employment contracts were not prevalent in their entirety, employees still stayed for a reasonable long period of time in a job, 3 – 5 years was the generally acceptable norm in the private sector.

All this changed as the various industrial sectors were deregulated and opened up. Movement of talent across industry became a norm. If you were still in traditional sectors of manufacturing / FMCG and had not hopped on to the bandwagon of IT, telecom, financial services, Banking, BPO or insurance, you were considered fuddy-duddy and not the ‘in’ crowd. You seem to be still content with your 10-15 % salary increases every year and marginal bonuses with missing stock plans. The new sectors lured you with bumped up fixed salaries, huge variable and wealth creation options of stock plans. Campus recruitment changed its flavour with the new sectors dominating the first day hiring in B schools instead of the traditional FMCG. It became impossible to contain the move of bright talent into the new sectors. Few who were successful to retain their teams did it more because of personal style and less of organisational support.

This blog entry is related to the efforts of managers who still went out and did their best to retain their team while their hands were tied behind their backs. I wanted to touch upon such skills and tactics, these I learnt from my street smart business managers, I can vouch for this that together we contained the exodus at many levels by as much as 60-70%. The trick lies in team work between HR and Line, yes that is the simple secret of retaining your talent. Most of the times HR & Line are wanting to prove their own hypothesis and opinions about; the company, individual concerned, boss concerned, HR deptt, HR policies, compensation  and culture. The agendas involved are more personal than organisational. You truly have to rise above to keep the organisation purpose in mind and it is difficult. You have to curb your ego a lot in this kind of effort.

Let us start with the beginning, the employee comes to her manager and says she would like to thank the organisation for all that it has done for her but sees that the stint has borne fruit and would like to move to better opportunity. She talks about the great time she has had here and all the things she has learnt, she evades the topic of “why” is she leaving. She talks about the date of relieving and handing over. The manager in most cases is stunned as this is a surprise item for her and she has not seen this coming (pause, has this happened to you?, what was the state of your relationship with her?). The first reaction is anger, how can she do this to me, this is not acceptable, I have loads of work on my head and this is not right. She is unfair to me, coming like this and dropping this bomb on me. I would not let her go, simultaneously a lot of thoughts are running, how will this affect other team members, what will HR say, what will my boss say, what will my colleagues say.  Let me try to talk to her, who should I inform first, has she already told some of her colleagues, how will we manage the situation, is the information out, where is she going, how much is she getting there.  As you are going through these thoughts, you also start thinking about, what could have triggered this, has some of my comments, behaviour in the past led to this. What has gone wrong? 

Let us be honest, your first thoughts are not about her or the loss to the organisation, work, they are about saving yourself first. Your amygdale has kicked in and you do not even know yet, fight or flight reactions take over and cloud your judgement, you have lost your peace for the time being. You are reacting to the situation. You may lose your cool since there are 3 deadlines looming over and she is the one who is to deliver on these. You are seething inside because of the betrayal but you can not show it.

Here are some tips to handle this situation:

•  Take a deep breath and think about it as a normal day to day situation
• Do not let the frustration and anxiety come to your face
• Be aware of what is happening to you and get into the mode of responding logically instead of emotionally
•  Think of the last emotional conversation you had with the person and the triggers she had mentioned to you about keeping her unhappy (we will have to build on these to retain her)
• Buy out sometime to think through this, do not accept the resignation immediately even on mail. Write back to her that we have to think through this and you would not like to respond on the same.
•  Inform your HR colleague and your Boss immediately
• Start thinking of the Plan B for this critical resource while you start getting ready to retain her.
• Set up a face to face meeting after thinking through both the emotional and rational factors of retaining her with you.

·         Discuss your strategy with your Boss before meeting the employee

• Set up a meeting where you are in control and not the subordinate
• Discussions in the meeting:
• Let her open up and speak her mind to you. She will generally be deflecting the real topic of exit.
• Gently keep on probing till you understand the core of the issue.
• Once you have understood the real reason of dissatisfaction, ask what will it take to keep her in the company/ hold her back.
• Generate 2-3 alternatives
• Get ready for another round of discussions
• Set up meeting with upto 2 levels higher to retain

·    Retaining this talent is far easier than hiring a fresh one and training her to deliver what the current incumbent is delivering.

Once she has said yes to being in the organisation, a lot of damage has to be contained, between both of you, you have to think through all the answers both of you will be providing the eco-system around you. You will have to have answers for your subordinates, other colleagues as to how have you held her back since the curiosity will lead to a lot of rumours and aspersions. Find a proactive way to contain it.

Retaining Talent is hard work, real emotional and rational drain. Sometimes you will feel that it is a waste of an effort and why should you spend so much time in retaining this person and thought of giving up in between will cross your mind. Banish these thoughts and keep at it, when the talent is retained the fruits of labour are very sweet indeed.  You would have built a stronger relationship with the person in the process. You have saved a lot of cost for the company and improved its productivity.

Amen!