Employee Retention Links To Stock Price And Corporate Profitabiltiy

Staying Power

The keys to maximizing the value of your company are the people inside.

The Problem

One of the sole competitive advantages your business has is the people you hire to carry out your mission. Running a company effectively now and in the future is directly related to your ability to choose the right people for the right roles and retain them for the right period of time. Your ability to stay in the marketplace and stay on top hinges on how well you maximize the returns on your people investments, leverage the strengths of your mission-critical players, key contributors and next-level leaders, and have them stay actively engaged and effective.

Media from the Wall Street Journal to CNN, and several hundred CEOs with whom I’ve spoken, agree that one of the top strategic initiatives of many companies is hiring not only new talent, but also the right talent. It is forecast that by 2012, we will be fully engaged in a shortage of high-level leadership talent.

The impetus for this talent “shortage” is that there will be fewer knowledge workers available and interested in full-time gigs. It is a simple supply-and-demand problem, but the global marketplace, a weak and corrupt education system, and technology make the problem worse for the small to midsized companies competing for the best talent.

Given the shifting demographics facing us, companies committed to winning the war for talent not only have to create an environment that fosters growth, development and challenge, but also need to implement systems and operating practices that maximize their ability to attract and retain the best. This behavioral and corporate transformation is referred to as adopting a talent mindset.

This shift in mindset empowers business leaders of progressive organizations to maximize the talent of their people. When they leverage their people’s strengths and fully engage their work-teams, they capitalize on the brainpower of their workforce while innovating faster, competing harder and achieving their corporate objectives sooner.