Who are the three most valuable people in your business? What would happen to your business if just one of them left?

In any business, people are your greatest asset. Yet, we tend to take more care of our capital assets than our human assets. We insure them adequately, maintain them well and have back-up power and a contingency plan so that interruptions are minimised.

In the current competitive climate, replication of your products and services is relatively easy for your competitor to do. What is much more difficult is to replicate your people, the relationships they have developed with your customers and the cohesion and therefore morale of your staff.

You know who your best people are. These are your highly experienced people who have unique knowledge or skills, they have formed strong relationships and therefore influence with your customers and their colleagues enjoy working with them. There would be an enormous gap if they left your business.

Yet we often take very little proactive action to keep these valuable people, nor do we often have a back-up plan if they do leave.

Keeping Your Best People

What can, in fact what should you do, to keep your best people engaged, thus making it less likely they will be lured by your competitors?

People become, and stay, engaged when they feel motivated to do their best work and when they feel appreciated for their contribution to the team and the business.

It is therefore critical that you know precisely what motivates each person in your team.

Is it ensuring that they have interesting and challenging work? Is it knowing that they will have the resources to do their job? Does the group of people they are working with on the project motivate them? Is it knowing that their ability and willingness to do a variety of tasks increases their job security?

Motivational Drivers

Each person has 3-5 strong motivational drivers and when you know these you can ‘push’ these drivers and thus help the person to become, and to remain, strongly motivated.

When people are highly motivated, they do their best work and they feel a high level of satisfaction. They are highly engaged and are unlikely to seek work elsewhere.

There is a pertinent quote: ‘We go where we are wanted, we stay where we are appreciated.’

Often your best people achieve exceptional results, autonomously and quietly. They don’t demand resources or feedback, while others who are less competent and less confident can demand much of your time and energy.

As a result, it is easy to unwittingly take your best people for granted, and eventually, they feel unappreciated and become open to approaches from your competitors.

Jim Collins in his book ‘Good to Great’ said that for a business to succeed you should ‘get the right people on the bus’. The secret you then need to know is how to keep those people on the bus.

To ensure you retain your best people, understand motivational drivers and get the best out of your staff, BOOK NOW for our Breakfast Leadership Masterclass – How to Stop Competitors Poaching Your Best People.

This dynamic 2-hour workshop, held in partnership with WSBC, will be brought to you by Diana Tapp from World Class Teams.