Last week I was on my way to having dinner in Atlanta with 15 executives from Fortune 500 companies to discuss creating a workplace that gets top talent to stick around when low and behold I met Jeff The Plucker. You wouldn’t know just by looking at Jeff that he is to be feared. He looked like an average guy riding the train home from a long day at the office. Only his office happens to be your office. That’s right. Jeff is plucking people out of your office and most likely you won’t even know he’s there until it’s too late.
You may think you are safe because your business isn’t in Atlanta. But here’s the thing. Jeff is traveling around the country to staff up offices for his company, which is a global organization. He shared with me, with a grin on his face, that he’s having the time of his life. Why? Because he’s having no problem plucking people out of their organizations. He’s a guy with a reputation for keeping his word. All he has to do is promise people a better future than the one they have and off they go to his organization.
I’m telling you this so that you have time to create a force field around your organization that will prevent Jeff from pulling out your super stars. I’ve done enough searches to know that people who are happy in their jobs won’t even consider taking a call from someone like me or for that matter, Jeff.
There are a number of things you can do to immediately prevent Jeff and others like him from taking your top talent and making them them their top talent. Here are three. To read the rest, download a copy of Talent Magnetism.
- Take the temperature inside each department of your organization. Employees may be soaking in the sun in your sales department while cloud cover is creating quite a dismal work atmosphere in customer service. Identify specifically which areas need adjusting and then take action to create sunny skies throughout the company.
- Check to make sure your salaries are still competitive. Yes, we all hear that people don’t leave for money, but they do leave when they don’t feel they are being compensated fairly for the value they bring to an organization. Now is the time to make sure you are treating your best employees like they really matter.
- Invest in your people. I’ve recently been working with a number of organizations to provide coaching to their high potentials and those who they most value. That’s because these organizations understand that most super stars want to continue to improve and that any company that is willing to help them do so is certainly a company worth staying with.
Matuson Consulting works with organizations to help create magnetic workplaces where top talent sticks around. Call today to learn how to get started, before Jeff decides your great people need to be his next catch.
