Retaining 20% staff that do 80% of the work

One of the toughest jobs today is retaining staff who are efficient, experienced and have been thoroughly trained in the way the company works.

I think that all employers recognize that a certain amount of turnover is beneficial, for example letting deadwood go, but a high rate of attrition does have a negative impact on the company. Especially on the morale of those employees, who for whatever reason choose to stay.

Sometimes I believe that entrepreneur’s are so involved in ‘growing’ their business that they ignore visible signs of employee unrest. When scaling a business upwards I can actually empathize with this having done exactly this myself. Until one day, much to my surprise (and horror) a small group of my best employees came to me and told me that they were moving on. I learned a valuable lesson about employees that day.

Frankly, I think I had forgotten that employees are people and needed to be treated as such. I had been so engrossed in business growth that I had become a pretty unlikeable person.

After listening closely to what my employees had to say that fateful day, I learned that its necessary to spend a few minutes of everyday verbally appreciating what people had done. Something that had not crossed my mind, quite simply because no one spent a few minutes of any day appreciating what I had done to grow the my company on that day. Every one expected me to do what I had to do, period. While I had to appreciate what others did.

This was one valuable lesson I learned that day.

Oh! another lesson I learned was that it pays handsomely to – ‘Shut up and Listen’. I still use this to my absolute benefit with both employee’s and client’s.

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