I help small business owners who are struggling with recruitment and retention to find and keep high performers that will scale their business exponentially.
I have worked in performance management for over two decades, specialising in creative knowledge workers. I have collaborated with a variety of business owners, founders, and directors to develop and implement strategies that instil confidence, focus, engagement, accountability, and satisfaction in their team members. This improves performance and enables them to expand their business and revenue faster than ever before.
One question my customers ask me is ‘how do I compete with the top dogs and known brands to recruit and retain the top talent in my industry’?
Here is my best advice. Lead with vision and clarity as this provides the context in which people will behave, have the right balance of autonomy and alignment so that people have the freedom to be creative but focus on the direction needed and pay the highest rate you can afford, not the lowest rate you can negotiate.
People are unique individuals and want to be treated as such. Create working environments that empower people to manage their own working patterns to suit their lives. This may be working one or all days remotely, it may be starting work before 8 am and finishing before 5 pm. Creative, highly talented people don’t become more creative or talented because they are contracted to you between the hours 9 to 5. Cease tracking the number of days off a person takes. Contract a person on the basis of what outcomes you want and what success would look like, not how many hours a day or days in a year the person is at their desk.
People who work with other highly gifted individuals are often more motivated and productive than those who work alone. Creativity and growth occur as a result of interactions with others they can learn from. If your team is not large enough to permit this, it is important to establish or promote access to communities where this can happen. Individuals place a premium on knowledge sharing and it may be what keeps them employed.
It is essential to invest in personal and professional development. High performers are often that because they commit to continuous learning and developing. Acknowledge that time is needed for this and demonstrate that you understand this. Businesses I support encourage the team to spend 10% of their time on professional development every week, and offering subscriptions to training videos etc.
Allow people to make decisions within their roles. If you have set the right context in which people are making decisions, they will ordinarily make decisions that are in the best interest of the business or with the best intentions. Not every decision will be the right one. Nonetheless, by ensuring that people are given the channels that foster alignment within the organisation, these decisions are often learning opportunities for the whole team and the company itself. What are these channels for alignment? These are part of the steps a business and its managers take as part of their human resource management operations. For further insight, see my blog on ‘3 simple strategies to get your team all heading in the same direction creatively’.
Remuneration is often a contentious subject, and most small businesses cannot compete with larger companies on this front. However, you can often afford more than you think and changing your mindset from always trying to negotiate the lowest rate to demonstrating that you are willing to pay the highest rate you can afford goes a long way in building trust and confidence. Recruiting a new employee can be less cost effective than placing a higher value on an existing employee. A smart question to ask yourself is, ‘if I were to recruit this person again right now, what I would be willing to pay to get them?’ You answer is what you should be paying.
A high performer can have the impact on the business that two or three ordinary performers will have; that is your saving right there. Feeling valued within a business is often the critical factor in employee retention. Getting increases and rates wrong without openly discussing it first can result in someone looking outside the business for a different opportunity within hours.
I hope you found this information useful. If you are in the UK or are an online business and require assistance with recruiting and retaining top performers, you can reach me on:
Phone: 07468459275
Email: Lucy@mind.karbondesigned.co.uk
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