How to Attract, Retain and Maximize Talent

In today’s tough economy, top performers can be a company’s biggest asset.

In difficult economic cycles, it’s common to see companies react rather than respond to the challenges of the marketplace. Driving cost efficiencies is obviously imperative. It’s where the reductions are made that makes the difference between the business hoping for survival and the one planning for growth.  The error made by many organizations is a common one: effectively liquidating their present and future performance by eliminating the one thing a business should never compromise, the education and development of its talent. This is a service-based creative economy, where product differentiation is short-lived. It doesn’t matter which industry you operate within, the same principles apply. The only source of differentiation is the client experience, and the most significant influence on that is the employee experience.

The most important asset of any business in any sector is the intellectual property and creativity locked up in the minds of those they employ. Sadly, very few companies seek to unlock that potential and draw it into performance.

I’m not referring to throwing money at traditional training programs; the challenges of this economy are not going to be overcome by the same level of thinking and methods used in previous years. This is about evolving to a far more intelligent and effective means of maximizing talent.

It doesn’t take leadership genius to understand that business growth is autobiographical. If your people are growing in their personal lives, that growth will manifest itself in their professional lives, and it’s personal growth that is the key to attracting, retaining and maximizing talent.

Let me explain what I mean by personal growth, because there are two very different aspects to personal growth, and both provide very different deliverables on company performance.

Training provides “extrinsic” personal development, where information is learned from outside of the individual. This is the traditional method of learning used by the education system. Gaining knowledge of the product, marketplace, competitors and clients are obviously essential to allow employees to do their job, however, knowing information doesn’t mean they’ll perform beyond contractual obligations, and many of them may not even manage that.

I think virtually every business leader has been frustrated at some point by what appears to be a poor return of investment with traditional training programs. The problem isn’t actually the training itself; the problem is in the expectation of what it can achieve. Training produces competence, not sustainable improvements in performance. It fails to address the performance gap, the difference between what we know and what we do.

To improve results, you have to change behaviors, and that can only come from “intrinsic” personal development, the essential component of a high performance business environment and the fundamental aspect to attracting, retaining and maximizing talent. Sadly, it also happens to be the most overlooked.

Intrinsic personal development is where the individual learns more about themselves, discovering their values, establishing a purpose for their personal and professional life, creating a compelling vision for success that is underpinned by meaningful, worthy goals. This is self-leadership, and when attuned to company objectives, it’s the essence of inspirational performance.

It’s not just the changes in the economy that companies need to address,  but the shift in the dynamics and attitude of the workforce should be addressed. People, particularly those of Generation Y (born 1981 onwards) want to be led, not managed. They want employers who help them grow personally, not simply measure their output against performance objectives. No one is naïve enough to think performance measurement isn’t important, however, it’s a futile exercise if what is being measured isn’t growing.

The key to attracting, retaining and maximizing the potential of talent is creating a learning environment that develops self-leadership at every level of the business. This is a responsibility that rests firmly on the shoulders of leaders. People want to work, stay loyal and perform at their best for the leader committed to their personal growth-a leader who coaches for performance rather than a manager who directs and measures it.

In these challenging times, it pays dividends to stop looking outside of the business for answers and start looking closer to home. Be willing to get under the hood of the business and assess just how those you employ in leadership positions operate with their staff; therein lies the axis of influence on your top and bottom line.

If they are focused on measuring and managing, not coaching and leading, you will not be maximizing your most precious asset ,and it will be affecting your business performance.  Be willing to look at why your leaders operate that way. Look at how you and your senior team engage with people in the business, because what you see in the middle and lower tiers of your business will always reflect the behaviors of those occupying senior positions.