{"id":490,"date":"2006-08-03T01:00:54","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T09:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=490"},"modified":"2006-08-03T01:00:54","modified_gmt":"2006-08-03T09:00:54","slug":"retaining-your-senior-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"Retaining Your Senior Talent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I (and many others) keep talking about the major reductions in senior level talent coming our way.\u00a0 Retirees will make up an increasing percentage of our population in the coming decades, and there are too many large shoes to fill.\u00a0 One of the major challenges is to understand how we as HR organizations can enhance the retention, engagement and performance of this set of employees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">First of all, who is your senior talent?\u00a0 Primarily, it\u2019s your executives, those being groomed to be executives and senior practitioners.\u00a0 They might be the partners of the firm.\u00a0 Senior practitioners can be defined by you, but if you\u2019re a law firm, they are your top attorneys.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a consulting firm, they are your partners.\u00a0 If you are a pharma, it\u2019s your senior scientists.\u00a0 At any rate, you should know who in your organization are the people who contribute to strategy and profits the most.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">High end senior talent is an odd group of people.\u00a0 They blur the line between work and personal lives and space.\u00a0 Often, there is no line.\u00a0 How many executives have you seen on the beach in Hawaii with their Blackberry\u2019s?\u00a0 (they are pretty easy to pick out, don\u2019t you think?)\u00a0 How many of them can you send an e-mail to at 11pm and be confident you\u2019ll have a response in 10 minutes?<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">They blur the line not because they are paid so much that they have to.\u00a0 Your senior talent has earned the right to be called senior talent through years of effort, learning, and commitment.\u00a0 There\u2019s one other critical ingredient though.\u00a0 Almost all of them are highly engaged.\u00a0 They work so hard because they love what they do.\u00a0 They key is not to retain them, but to determine how not to drive them away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Here are a few ingredients to that equation:<\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\" style=\"margin-top: 0in\">\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\">Space:\u00a0 Senior talent walk a fine line between      autonomy and community \u2013 and sometimes you have to manage that line for      them.\u00a0 More than anyone else, senior      talent are the ones who work at home or are on so many sales calls that      nobody ever sees them.\u00a0 They are in      such high demand that being in the office and talking to their peers seems      like wasted time.\u00a0 However, they are      also the ones who can not only share the most knowledge, but they also      gain the most insights through these casual conversations.\u00a0 Creating flexible workspaces that are a      combination of office community, personal\/private, and virtual are all      important features that allow them to contribute to the community, but      satisfy their need to private time for heads down work.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\">Innovation:\u00a0 As I mentioned above, everyone has      ideas.\u00a0 And everyone passes ideas      through casual conversation.\u00a0 But      these casual conversations are the most productive for senior talent.\u00a0 This is because they are able to      synthesize and connect data points that many others simply can\u2019t you\u2019re      your key goal should be to provide space and forums for them to gain these      ideas and synthesize them into best practices.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\">Engagement:\u00a0 They already love what they do.\u00a0 How do you keep them loving it?\u00a0 Quite simple actually \u2013 keep giving them      new challenges.\u00a0 This might mean new      projects, or having your senior executives communicate the need for new      solutions to problems.\u00a0 Sometimes      though it\u2019s just not possible to retain someone.\u00a0 An external challenge or turnaround      might be too alluring for some.\u00a0 The      key is to understand that senior talent can\u2019t always be bought with more      compensation \u2013 there\u2019s always more money somewhere else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I (and many others) keep talking about the major reductions in senior level talent coming our way.\u00a0 Retirees will make up an increasing percentage of our population in the coming decades, and there are too many large shoes to fill.\u00a0&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies","category-talent-management","category-workforce-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}