Introduction
The main role of the human resource department is to ensure that a company has a reliable, skilled, and committed workforce to deliver the tasks of the company. The HR department hires employees on demand, trains them for the various organizational tasks that they may be assigned and chooses to retrench some employees when such a need arises as per the strategic objectives of the company. However, with a fiercely competing business world, it has been tough for companies to retain their most talented employees. The current paper identifies the challenges that companies face as they seek to retain their most talented employees. Additionally, the paper notes the various undertakings that the company should put in place to ensure that it does not lose their talented employees to their competitors.
Challenges of keeping the Most Talented Employees
The current section identifies the five most prominent reasons that lead to HR departments losing their most talented employees. It should be understood that the reasons are motivated by both internal and external factors. The internal factors refer to the in-house issues that could lead to talented employees leaving their job positions. On the other hand, external factors refer to the idea that forces from the outside of the involved company could motivate talented employees to leave the current positions of employment in a company (Khoreva and Vaiman, 2015). In this regard, the current sections identifies the two main internal factors and the two main external factors that lead to companies losing their most talented employees. Additionally, the current section identifies the personal reasons that could lead highly talented employees to leave their positions thereby causing imbalance and significant hitches to the entire workmanship of the involved company.
The Internal Factors
Ineffective Policies and Big Company Bureaucracies
The human resource department needs to be clear on the policies that they develop to control the way the hired employees operate while fulfilling their delegated tasks. Apparently, talented employees will need to feel comfortable working within the set terms and regulations in their specific job positions. However, most established companies tend to over-emphasis on some unrealistic policies that tend to curtail the comfort of talented employees (Korzynski, 2013). In fact, some of the established companies have policies that are outdated and, in the modern day context, are bound to achieve nothing except the destabilizing the way employees should conduct themselves in the quest to attain their assign duties. The human resource departments ought to ensure that they develop policies that are sustainable and task-specific. Talented employees have been revealed to be comfortable working within policies that they are involved in developing. Therefore, unless the companies develop an approach of developing policies that favor employee participation, the talented employees could be forced to live and work in companies that value their input rather than the bureaucratic ineffective corporate policies.
Poor Performance Reviews
Talented employees, just like every other human being, value being appreciated for their input in the organization that employs them. Apparently, most companies still practice the outdated and impractical of always criticizing regardless of the input that employees put into delivering their assigned tasks. The belief that focusing on the negatives will make employees aim at improving their abilities to deliver positive results is misguided. In fact, talented employees will be motivated to perform and attain set deliverables if they are positively acknowledged and appreciated (McHenry Martin, 2014). Research has shown that the human resource department, supervisors, other senior managers and team leaders need to consistently motivate their most talented employees in a way that makes them feel a part of the involved organization. Therefore, a company may lose its talented employees if it always provided negative performance reviews of the employees. Employees will seek to move to companies that appreciate their talents and skills rather than remain in a company that focuses on their negatives.
The External Forces
Better Job Offers
The main reason that individuals seek an education is to improve their employability. People also seek accreditation, licensing and other qualifications so that they can meet the required attributes for employment in the various avenues in their fields of practice (Zvavahera, 2015). Apparently, individuals will seek to be employed in the best paying jobs that guarantees satisfactory working conditions. Additionally, chances are that talented employees will keep an open eye for better paying jobs than their current ones. Therefore, it is a challenge for the human resource departments to ensure that the jobs they offer, the perks they pay and the working conditions that they provide motivate highly talented employees to remain as employees within their current organization. However, with the complicated markets of the modern day, it will take high levels of investments to ensure that top talents are maintained in their current positions of employment within the same organization for a long time (Prestoungrange, 2000). In this regard, without enough investment, it will be a challenging endeavor to keep top talents in a specific organization while better jobs, with better perks keep beckoning.
Relocation to Other Cities
When a talented employee relocates to another city or moves to live in another country, the human resource are bound to strain as they seek their replacements. Living in a highly globalized modern era, the movement of people from one location to the other is not as complicated as it was a few years back. Therefore, it is imperative that organizations enhance the ability to maintain their talented employees so that they are assured of maintaining high levels of productivity (Ruschak, 2005). The human resource departments face an uphill task of convincing top talents to remain in their current positions. Apparently, it will take assurances of improved payment packages for top talents to remain in their positions and not leave for better paying and improved job position in the international market. The movement of top talents to different cities for any reason will also mean that the organization will lose out on their input in the development of the company. Therefore, it is imperative that the involved company employs all reasonable, ethical and moral strategies to ensure that they mitigate the challenge of changing locations among highly talented employees.
Personal Development Factors
The human resource departments face an uphill task of convincing highly talented employees not to leave their current positions. Apparently, talented employees possess the skills, the expertise and, in most cases, the accreditation to venture into individual practice. Such employees stand a better chance of succeeding if they started their own businesses rather than staying in employment positions, unless they get paid highly attractive perks and salaries (Selander and Ruuskanen, 2016). Other personal reasons could also motivate highly talented employees to leave their positions of work and follow their other passions. Therefore, the challenge of personal development has to be considered as the human resource departments seek to address the question of maintaining top talents in their organizations.
Recommended Strategies to Keep Talented Employees
The human resource departments ought to initiate strategies that will enhance the retention of top and highly talented employees within their organizations. The current section will detail the proven strategies that can work to retain workers who may be seeking to leave their positions for whatever reasons. It is estimated that the applications of the strategies recommended herein will significantly help retain top, talented employees and enhance the levels of motivation, productivity and the quality of the services that an organization is bound to deliver.
First, the human resource departments, and the entire leadership teams in the organizations have to develop tactics that motivate and recognize the role that individual employees play in the company. Apparently, it takes sacrifice to deliver and complete assigned tasks, and it will be an effective motivation technique if team leaders take it as a priority to talk to the individual employees regarding their contribution to the development of the organization. In this regard, it is clear that keeping talented employees will require consistent motivational talks and other actions aimed at enhancing positivity and the feeling of being valued within the organization.
The second recommendation that should be taken is to offer incentives and better payment packages to highly productive employees. Clearly, people get motivated to work and deliver on their assignments based on the amount of rewards, in this context financial, that they are bound to receive (McCoy, 2002). If an employee is paid attractive perks for accomplishing a specific amount of work, it is apparent that they will be motivated to remain in their positions. Therefore, the human resource departments have to formulate an effective procedure that will see highly talented employees paid better to ensure that they do not leave and join other competing entities.
Another strategy that should be undertaken is to ensure that employees participate in decision making forums. It has been established that employees receive work policies positively if they are included and consulted during their formulation. Clearly, companies need to shun the traditional ways of developing policies that tend to silence the participation of employees and adopt new techniques that will ensure employees are part and parcel of the policy formulation processes in the organization. Not only does such a technique enhance the feeling of involvement, it also raises the bar among employees giving them a responsibility of working together to realize the goals of the organization. The modern human resource departments, those seeking to maintain their top employees and retain the best talents, ought to ensure that they do all they can to have their best employees remaining within their organizations.
Conclusion
It is clear that in the modern human resource settings, having a top talent in an organization is a strength that should be valued immensely. Experts have pointed out that retaining the best talents is an investment that can never be underrated and that it is the ultimate aim that every organization should work to attain. The benefits of retaining the best talents and the highly skilled employees in an organization far much exceed those of conducting new hiring exercises. Therefore, it is important that the human resource departments work towards retaining their top talents and most skilled employees to evade huge losses and lowered morale among the employees of an organization.
References
Khoreva, V. and Vaiman, V. (2015). Intent vs. action: talented employees and leadership development. Personnel Review, 44(2), pp.200-216.
Korzynski, P. (2013). Employee motivation in new working environment. International Journal of Academic Research, 5(5), pp.184-188.
McCoy, C. (2002). Book Review: Retaining Valued Employees. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 22(3), pp.246-247.
McHenry Martin, C. (2014). Recruiting, Hiring, and Retaining Good Employees. The Consultant Pharmacist, 29(8), pp.514-519.
Prestoungrange, G. (2000). Customer orientation and motivation: the key to effective learning organisations. Journal of Workplace Learning, 12(3), pp.94-100.
Ruschak, A. (2005). In Action: Retaining Your Best Employees. AORN Journal, 82(3), pp.493-494.
Selander, K. and Ruuskanen, P. (2016). Why do Third Sector Employees Intend to Remain or Leave their Workplace? Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 6(2), p.81.
Zvavahera, P. (2015). An Analysis of the Complex Model of Motivation in Retaining and Motivating Employees. Business and Management Horizons, 3(1), p.1.
