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Talent Retention

Talent retention is a serious issue for many businesses today. Each time a talented manager or member of staff leaves, they often take with them valuable knowledge and expertise, and leave a void which can be time consuming and expensive to fill. . But why do some businesses struggle to keep their talent, and why do talented people become disillusioned and leave?

There are usually a number of different root causes to this problem. It may be that the talented individual and their manager are striving to climb what appears to them as the same ladder in the organisation. The consequence of this is that they often see themselves as “competitors” because they feel their personal career interests are in direct conflict. If the manager then resorts to “blocking behaviour’, and prevents the talented individual from progressing, they will quickly become disillusioned and leave.

Another reason why talent leaves is because they become “turned off” by their line manager. Talented people want stretch opportunities to prove themselves but managers can perceive that giving their staff stretch opportunities to learn and develop is a very risky business. As they are ultimately responsible for what the talent delivers, they do not want to risk their own reputation or career because a particular talent has failed to deliver. The result of this is that the talented individual feels that they are not stretched, they become frustrated and leave.
The final reason is similar to the above in that the size or breadth of the business does not provide enough career ‘promotion’ opportunities. To gain their next move, talent may perceive that they have to wait many years until someone retires, and they are simply not prepared to do this.

So how can businesses prevent talent from leaving? The key is to have a visible talent management programme that is owned by senior managers where these issues can be highlighted and dealt with. In addition, businesses must provide their managers with the necessary skills to manage their talent appropriately and help them to understand the benefits of developing talent, for themselves, their team and ultimately the business’ success.