For Ochre House, 14th February marked not only Valentines Day but also our latest think tank in Hong Kong; Retaining talent beyond the bonus. The discussion centred on the topical debate of how organisations are seeking to retain the best and brightest talent in Asia Pacific.

Despite retaining (the right) talent being a critical focus for organisations across the globe, why does it continue to be a major challenge for businesses?

The discussion at our think tank along with meetings with many HR and business leaders has led me to conclude that, generally, organisations that are more successful or less successful in managing retention are differentiated by four common ingredients.

1: Increase pay and benefits to increase retention

When looking to ‘solve’ retention issues, less successful organisations will start with the easy medicine; offer more money or better benefits – easy to implement but not sustainable; competitors imitate by also increasing money and benefits, which reduces industry profitability and drives inflation – a negative outcome for all.

Conversely, more successful organisations focus on offering something unique to employees that will drive them to stay longer and, importantly, motivate them. Understanding the ‘leavers’ that have been applied to manage retention in this situation is less clear and therefore less open to competitor copying.

2: Focusing on retention rather than engagement

Less successful organisations focus on looking at the issue (retention) rather than the root cause (employee engagement and motivation). For example, organisations invest in collecting exit interview data to understand the reason why employees chose to leave.

Instead, more successful organisations seek to understand why employees have considered leaving in the first place – the catalyst. As a result organisations that focus on the drivers of disengagement typically see the retention issues dramatically decrease or disappear completely.

3: Measuring the wrong things

Less successful organisations report attrition as a percentage of leavers from the total workforce. Some of the better differentiate between ‘regretted’ and ‘non regretted’ leavers. This however only serves to differentiate between those you are pleased to see move on vs the population you’re generally happy with.

To truly understand the business issue of retention, more successful organisations recognise the need to identify the superstars that they really cannot afford to loose; the champion sales managers or R&D gurus. After all, these people may be responsible for generating many millions for current or future profits, so ensuring they stick around is of critical importance. By measuring these losses (and assuming a proxy value for the opportunity cost) the more successful organisations can really start to focus retention activities to where they are most valuable.

4: Applying ‘one size fits all’

Less successful organisations seek to rollout generic, global retention initiatives that are applicable to all segments of the workforce in all countries around the world. This is a big mistake. Not, only are the drivers of engagement (and therefore retention) very different across the workforce but the cultural differences across countries also need to be considered.

By contrast, more successful organisations develop a suite of tools centrally to be utilised and customised in the context of local needs.

In summary, when it comes to managing retention, there is no ‘silver bullet’. However these four ingredients go some way to helping differentiate those organisations that have had success with managing retention vs those that are still scratching the proverbial head.

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