Organisations are now operating in an age where company loyalty doesn’t
mean what it used to. Australia’s stagnant
wage growth and high costs of living have given millennial employees a
reputation for frequently seeking greener pastures in the job space.
Consequently, the capacity to retain your top talent has become a point of
competitive advantage. The retention of your high
potentials (HIPOs) – those employees that consistently and significantly
outperform their peers - will ensure substantive growth for years to come,
based on a competitive advantage. Successful retention of talent also helps to
ensure satisfaction amongst consumers, colleagues, and supervisors, and generates
a culture of success.
For an employee to be truly considered a HIPO, they need to a proven
performer with three distinguishing attributes:
- The ambition and potential to rise to leadership roles
- The ability to be more effective in more responsible and senior roles
- The engagement to commit to remaining in challenging roles
Conversely, failing to retain
these HIPOs can have dire implications, with recent findings suggesting that
the average cost of replacing an employee through HR recruitment often exceeds 100% of the annual salary of the
vacated position. This is in addition to
the ‘hidden’ costs associated with the loss of your top talent, such as other
employees asking themselves ‘why’ high-performing individuals have opted to
leave an organisation, and potentially following suit. This in turn may result in a potential loss of
productivity, general disengagement from the company, or even additional
turnover. Furthermore, it is often the case that the new,
in-coming employee will be far less skilled than the HIPO worker that they are
replacing, which has the potential to significantly impact on the company’s work
chain.
Just as your highest
performers continue to strive towards excellence, so to must HR managers and
professionals when searching for new initiatives to further promote the
long-term employment of their high potential employees. Many practical organisations are striving to
ensure retention of their top talent through the implementation of these Human Resource
solutions.
1.
Ongoing Training and Development
Employees want to have an idea as to how
their career can develop/progress while at a company. This presents managers with numerous avenues
to help retain their HIPOs. HIPO programs provide employees a myriad of ways to
develop the core competencies required to ascend within an organisation.
Training courses, coaching/mentoring, and online
e-learning sessions make it clear to staff their futures are being invested in.
Task HIPOs with the most stimulating
tasks that align with their passions and let them put their new skills to work.
This conveys a clear message to your
high performers that they are the future of the company, and are able to
move into more senior, leadership roles in the future.
2.
Flexibility
With the rise of modern
technology, gone are the typical 9 to 5 working days, which have instead been replaced by more fluid working
practises, such as remote-working, online teams, and flexible work hours. Such practises have now become so common that
many employees have come to expect them as the norm, and may opt to leave a
company which cannot make such accommodations.
Employers should consider implementing more
flexible working conditions wherever possible, to allow staff the chance to
better balance their working and personal commitments. Where this is simply not viable, the emphasis
should instead be on educating employees as to why this is not an option,
ensuring that they understand the reasons behind this, and thereby avoiding issues
in the future.
3.
Value Employees
Recognising the efforts of
your HIPOs is a simple, yet effective means of showing your employees that you
value and appreciate them. When
individuals feel as though their managers notice and value their contributions,
this can serve to increase their overall motivation and
loyalty to the company. Organisational
commitment and engagement are strong drivers that severely decrease the
likelihood of turnover. Wherever
possible, managers should reward HIPOs for their hard work by promoting from
within, as well as through letting staff know about upcoming roles for which
they are ideally suited.
4. Honest
and Open Communication that Encourages Feedback
Barriers to effective
communication and feedback between managers and employees are among the
greatest contributors to individuals becoming frustrated in the workplace. In order to retain top performers, managers
should strive to do two things.
Firstly, to provide
constructive feedback to their employees (recent findings reported in the Harvard Business Review indicated that over 90% of
survey respondents felt that performance feedback from managers was essential
for improving performance).
Secondly, they need to be
willing to listen, really listen, to
employee concerns. Allowing time for consistent, face-to-face
meetings with your staff, to promote the free exchange of feedback and ideas,
can have a marked impact on talent retention. This should therefore be considered with the
utmost importance.
5. Set
Clear Expectations and Goals
Setting goals, and ensuring
that your employees know what is expected of them, has been shown to promote greater staff
retention. Paint a picture for your top
earners, one which shows what success in the company looks like. Tailor goals specific to their level of skill
and experience, so that they continually have realistic targets to strive
towards. Ensure that your employees share your future vision for the company.
6. Link
Work to Company Vision
Employees want to feel that
what they do is making a difference, be that to the company itself, or to the industry
as a whole. In fact, recent findings suggest that over 40% of
employees consider ‘meaningful work’ to be the primary motivator for them
considering taking a job. Your top
talent need to know why they are
doing the things they’re doing. By linking their roles and responsibilities
with the overarching aims of the company, managers can set themselves apart
from the competition, and promote greater company
engagement
amongst top operators.
These HR solutions are simple and
easy to implement. Nonetheless they can play a pivotal role in retaining your
top talent, ensuring the long-term profitability of your company. After all, in the words of American business
consultant Jim Collins, ‘great vision, without great people, is irrelevant’.
As noted above, a common
psychological marker that can signify HIPO employees is Ambition. The use of a psychometric personality assessment can
identify those within your organisation that have the drive to succeed.
The
Business Personality Reflections® is a
personality questionnaire that measures business-related competencies to assist
in selection and personnel development decisions. Developed by Psych Press, this assessment
contains 70 personality scales that can be specifically tailored to any organisation’s
needs. Below is more information about
the Ambition scale in the Business
Personality Reflections®.
Ambition
Ambition refers to an individual’s desire to
achieve. It is the willingness to obtain
success in both workplace and personal settings. Ambition itself embodies capitalistic and
economic growth ideals: it is one of the foundations – and indeed a necessity –
for economic prosperity. Therefore, a
business aspiring for growth needs employees aligned with similar
motivation.
A
sample item for the Ambition scale
that you may see in our questionnaires could be:
“I am constantly aware of the need to be better than my
colleagues”.
Research has identified the importance of
measuring employee ambition. Firstly,
Huang et al. (2014) conducted a meta-analysis which showed ambition – as an
aspect of extraversion – to be predictive of adaptive workplace performance. That is, ambitious individuals were more
likely to easily adapt and thrive in changes within the workplace. Similarly, Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller (2012)
showed ambition to be positively associated with general mental ability (GMA). GMA is in turn, predictive of job success
(Hogan & Holland, 2003).
Oh, Kim and Van Iddenkinge (2015) found extraversion,
a higher order factor of ambition, to be positively related to managerial job
satisfaction and labour productivity. They
found extraversion to be indirectly related to firm financial performance –
this effect was moderated (i.e. strengthened) - through labour productivity. Most pertinently, however, Hogan and Holland
(2003) found high levels of extraversion-ambition significantly predicted
improved job performance.
Higher scorers on the Ambition scale are more likely to enjoy challenges and will pursue
workplace goals shrewdly, particularly if such goals develop their career
further.
Conversely, low scorers likely value job
security and reliability over career advancement and will complete allocated
tasks satisfactorily. However, they will
not tend to exceed this standard, whereas high scorers will likely go beyond
what is satisfactory.
You might want to consider using the Ambition scale in your development and
training processes if you need employees that:
- Are devoted to expanding the organisation
- Uphold and enforce your company’s ideals
- Have a willingness to go above and beyond the norm in order to achieve
Organisations consisting of ambitious employees
will reap the benefits in workplace culture, employee job satisfaction and
business growth. If you were interested in learning
more about the Ambition scale, or
the Business Personality Reflections® Personality questionnaire,
please simply enquire now
for a free trial.
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