Managing Talent Retention

Talent Departure's Impact on the Organization

Although every manager and team member is aware of problems associated with turnover, a review of its major consequences puts talent retention in the proper perspective. There are several categories that frame the major negative consequences of the departure of top talent. 

First there are the obvious consequences resulting directly from an individual’s departure such as the financial cost of hiring a replacement, productivity losses and workflow interruptions, loss of expertise within the department and possibly other exit problems or issues such as litigation depending upon the situation. 

Beyond these initial consequences there are several other ways in which the departure of top talent effects an organization.  Productivity and work flow interruptions often result in a drop in service quality and can cause the organization to lose business opportunities. Job satisfaction of remaining employees generally decreases when key talent leaves.  Social and communication networks are also often disrupted, causing administrative problems and further decrease in employee satisfaction.

If the departure is highly publicized, or if several key individuals leave an organization with in a small period of time, the image of the organization can be damaged, impacting its ability to attract new talent.     

Together these consequences can result in a loss of competitive advantage and can ultimately effect the survival of the organization itself.   

Human Capital is the Last Major Source of Competitive Advantage

Most of today’s organizations have easy access to two of the key success factors for businesses: finances and technology. 

Financial resources are available to almost any organization with a viable business model, even during economic downtimes.  One company no longer has an advantage over another to access the financial capital needed to run a business.

Access to technology is equal; a company can readily adapt technology to a given situation or business model.  Inexpensive or even free software for everything from website development and hosting to marketing databases and financial planning is available via the internet.  It is difficult to have a technology advantage in an information technology society.

With such prevalent availability of both financial and technology resources, organizations are left with only one real competitive advantage – the people that work there.  The realization that the only major difference between the top company and all of the others in a specific market is their human element - the ideas, strategies and talents of their employees - makes it clear why focusing on talent engagement and retention is more important than ever for the success of an organization.

Focus Groups - The Often Overlooked Final Step

Focus groups are a wonderful resource for obtaining additional information about the cause of specific retention issues in your organization.  They allow you to gather feedback directly from those that may be affected by such issues and can be very helpful in either identifying which issues should be researched further or validating the issues identified by other data collection methods. 

They also have an additional purpose that is often overlooked by organizations, and that is to validate the solutions that are chosen based upon the information that they provided. 

Once all of the data is collected from the focus groups, and the causes of turnover have been identified, organizations set about developing appropriate solutions to address those causes.  While selecting the right solution an organization may consider long term vs. short-term costs, impact and time needed to implement a solution and perhaps even a forecast of the expected ROI of that solution.  However once the solution is chosen, a key final step prior to implementation is to present both the combined data results and proposed solutions to the focus group for their input.  This last step ensures that the solution matches the needs identified by the group, and that the needs identified at the time of the focus group are still relevant by the time the solution is developed.

Finding the Right Facilitator for Your Focus Group

One of the necessary components to successfully conducting any of the focus groups previously outlined on this blog is an experienced facilitator.  While there are many companies for hire that offer facilitating services it is also possible to use an internal facilitator depending upon your organization’s situation. 

External facilitators may increase participation and be better able to facilitate an open and honest discussion, especially if participants know in advance that the session will be conducted by an objective, outside facilitator.  They may also be better able to manage difficult conversations because they are not a company spokesperson and do not need to defend the company’s action.  The disadvantage of using an external facilitator is that it will increase the direct costs of conducting the focus groups and it may take longer to schedule the sessions, depending on the facilitators availability.  

The other option is to use someone within the company who has previous experience as a facilitator.  This person does not necessarily have to be a member of the Human Resources or Management team.  For example organizations might use someone in Marketing or Sales who has previous experience conducting customer focus groups.  Using an internal facilitator can save time and money.  They may also have an advantage over an outside facilitator when managing difficult conversations because they understand the context better and can anticipate the likely challenges.  When choosing an internal facilitator it is important to select someone with a positive reputation within the company.  Participants are likely to feel hesitant to share their true opinions with an internal facilitator for fear that the information will not remain confidential or that it will affect their career with the company.  

Whether you decide to use an external or internal facilitator, the most important thing to consider when making your selection is their level of experience conducting similar types of events.  An experienced, skilled facilitator will be able to handle difficult conversations, help participants to stay focused and solicit open and honest feedback, resulting in useful retention information for your organization. 

Participant Selection - a Crucial First Step to Collecting Relevant Retention Data

The first step to ensuring your retention data collection techniques will result in useful information is to identify, select, and invite the appropriate individuals to participate.  Whether you are using questionnaires, retention surveys, interviews or focus groups to collect this information, if you don’t include the appropriate participants the information you receive may not provide you with a clear picture of the retention issues your company faces.  Including the right participants means that the information you obtain will be useful and relevant to your company’s specific retention issues.

To begin, identify and select individuals to participate who best reflect the group of individuals for whom a problem exists, and a solution needs to be created.  For example, if the identified problem is that technology employees leave the organization prior to their second-year anniversary, then technology employees who are soon to meet their second-year anniversary should be represented in the chosen data collection technique.  In another example, if the identified problem is that individual contributors recently promoted to management positions are leaving the company, then all recently promoted new managers should be represented in the data collection technique. 

Include at least 10 percent of the total researched population in the technique.  For example, if there are 1,000 employees who represent the target audience and you are conducting a focus group, plan to include 100 individuals in the focus groups. Invite 10-15 participants to ensure attendance of 6-12 participants of each focus group, the ideal focus group size.  For techniques that are easier to administer such as questionnaires and retention surveys, a larger percentage of the researched population can be included for even more accurate results. 

Nominal Group Technique - Combining Data from Multiple Focus Groups

A third format for conducting focus groups is the nominal group technique.  This approach allows unbiased input to be collected efficiently and accurately, and input is solicited from participants in a carefully structured format. 

This approach begins with a specific retention issue being presented to the group, for example, “Today, we’d like to hear from you – why you believe top sales performers, those consistently within the top 10% on closed sales, are leaving the company at a higher rate than the rest of the sales department.”  Participants in the focus group then make a list of the specific reasons they believe this is happening and then share their lists with the group in a round robin format while all of the ideas are recorded and posted around the room. 

Next the lists are consolidated and integrated and the participants are asked to identify which ten items they consider to be the most important causes of the retention issue, in order of importance.  After the lists are completed each participant reveals his or her number one item, and ten points are recorded next to that item on the list for each person that has selected it as number one.  Next, the number two reason is identified, and nine points are allotted for each person that selected that item as the number two reason.  This continues as each participant reveals their entire top ten list and points are assigned to each cause based upon the rankings the receive. 

Finally, all of the numbers next to each item are totaled and the item with the most points becomes the number one cause of the retention issue.  Generally the top 15 causes are captured and reported as the weighted average cause of the retention issue from that group. 

One of the major advantages of using the Nominal Group Technique is that it allows you to combine information from numerous focus groups to obtain an overall list of the top reasons for the identified retention issue.  Simply combine the final scores for each item identified by the individual focus groups to create a list of the top 15 issues affecting your retention of top talent.