Making sure that your business is worth staying for

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It's a competitive job market out there and the view that they're lucky to even have a job is going to get you into trouble sooner or later. Apart from the sheer financial impact of hiring new people, considering that this process typically costs 150% of the replacement's total salary, there is a great deal of risk attached to losing your top people.

This is because:

• it takes time and effort to rehire, draining your internal resources;
  
• your goodwill and relationships walk out the door, and with them lots of stored knowledge;
  
• hiring is a notoriously inexact process that will not necessarily unearth the right replacement for the person who has just moved on; and
  
• new hires take at least six months to reach full operational effectiveness.

It would serve you well to interrogate your own viewpoint regarding your people and to be brutally honest with yourself. Are you trying to get away with one, by offering your staff the bare minimum and hoping they'll stick around? Or are you authentically working hard to deliver a quality 'product' that will retain your human capital?

Regardless of your answer, this is what you need to do now to ensure that your business is worth staying for:

• Create jobs that excite;
  
• hire managers who are good people at their essence;
  
• ensure there is movement and fluidity within roles so that people stay fresh and interested;
  
• build a culture that stands for something; and
  
• instil a level of inspiration in your business ambitions that appeals to your people's sense of meaning or purpose.

That seems a fairly simple list. Your challenge is that putting this 'product' in place - including effectively communicating what it is - takes a lot of effort and it's something that needs constant attention. But it's so well worth doing right, as a business' culture is the best investment you can make.

Simply put, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

In summary, here's what you need to do to retain your people:

• Be critical about how hard you've tried to build an attractive environment to date.
  
• Ask people how they feel about the culture and invite them to give it to you straight.
  
• Gather your four best people around a table and get some thinking going around what a good working environment looks like.
  
• Then make a start and improve it over time in small increments.

Jobs are not privileges any longer and people won't stay and simply be grateful to have gainful employment. You need to create a compelling set of reasons to keep them.