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O P I N I O N
Keep the peeps! Bringing good people on board is one thing, retaining them is another. Make a concerted effort to keep your personnel engaged.
I recently facilitated a roundtable discussion. Never mind that the table wasn’t round. It was a long, awkwardly rectangular table. That little fact got us started with a good laugh. Our topic was recruitment. Leadership from within consulting firms in the Bay Area AEC industry comprised the group. We discussed recruitment strategies and shared our stories of hiring challenges. We talked about how the current job market is driving up salary expectations. We talked about how we are all fighting for the same good people. The race is on to be the best game in town. But, based on our discussion, it became apparent that our topic should not have been recruitment, but that other prong of team building – employee retention.
Chris Catton RECRUITING NOTES
❚ ❚ Regular communication of company vision. Peo- ple want to know there is a strong and clear sense See CHRIS CATTON, page 10 “The most relevant definition of retention is ‘the action of absorbing and continuing to hold a substance.’ In our case, ‘substance’ is our people, our employees.”
The most relevant definition of retention is “the action of absorbing and continuing to hold a substance.” In our case, “substance” is our people, our employees. How do we keep the people we’ve hired? It makes more business sense than anything else. Hold on to what you’ve got! There is not a silver-bullet answer for employee retention. It takes a mindful, coordinated approach to running a profitable operation with inspiring leadership and a stellar work environment.
Here’s my list of what it takes:
THE ZWEIG LETTER September 25, 2017, ISSUE 1217
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