How Can Managers Keep Their Best Employees from Being Poached by Rivals?

What should a manager do if he is a very good people developer but all his good employees are poached by his rivals?

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As an HR professional, it is essential to address this situation strategically. Firstly, the manager should evaluate the reasons why employees are leaving for rivals. Conduct exit interviews to gather feedback and identify any concerns or shortcomings within the company that may be leading to the attrition of top talent.

Once the root causes are identified, the manager can work on implementing retention strategies to prevent further poaching. This could include offering competitive salaries and benefits, providing opportunities for growth and development, creating a positive work culture, and ensuring open communication channels between employees and management.

Additionally, the manager should focus on building a strong employer brand to attract and retain top talent. By showcasing the company's values, mission, and commitment to employee success, the manager can position the organization as an employer of choice in the industry.

Overall, proactive measures and a people-centric approach are crucial in retaining employees and mitigating the impact of rivals poaching top talent.

The manager should not join the rival!  Humor aside, the retention of employees depends on the organization's culture as well. Merely having a good manager is not sufficient. You need to conduct a market survey of the salaries paid in your industry. If the salaries are at par with market standards, then conduct an employee satisfaction survey. Something unknown will surely come out.

Regards,
DVD

Dear Jess,

It is always better that we clearly indicate our role and the reason for asking the question. Are the rivals internal or external?

Have a nice day.

Simhan

If, in your opinion, the manager is so good, then why should his employees leave?

Why Employees Leave

Why employees leave is a question that does not have any single reason. In our career, we will find employees leaving the organization that has just recognized their performance and given them a promotion.

The fact is different employees react differently to different situations. We have observed that employees who have been exploited by employers in the past in some form are likely to stay longer when compared to others. So, the selection process should aim to fill up the position, not just a vacancy. By filling up the vacancy, HR has just ticked off one pending job, but when you try to fill up the position, you actually spend more time recruiting (probing their reasons for leaving past employments). These days, we find that employees leave organizations within just 2 years to get a higher CTC. These job hoppers need to be discouraged as they put a lot of pressure on the HR department since the recruitment cycle is always incomplete.

On the other hand, please ensure that the compensation of your employees is on par with industry standards and that you are not exploiting them just because they are not moving away from you.

Monitoring Social Groups

As managers, we only focus on employee development inside the office. The focus should also be on discreetly monitoring the social groups formed outside the organization. Visiting weddings of colleagues will give you a very good insight into informal groups. You can also observe reactions/comments about the organization when they are outside the office.

It is a long-drawn process. Lastly, but not least, show real interest in their personal lives, help them in troubled conditions (personal help only, no official color).

Regards,
M.V. Kannan

Employee Satisfaction and Engagement

Are you sure that your employees are overall satisfied with the culture within your company? Have you tried conducting one-to-one interviews when they decide to leave? What is the morale like among the employees? Do they talk to you about problems at work? Do they confide in you? If yes, have you ever tried solving their professional problems or helping the employees solve their professional problems? Sometimes the problems could be personal as well.

Conducting Surveys for Insights

Have you tried doing a 360° survey to know what employees generally think of top management? You'll have to make sure it remains confidential.

Lastly, just talking nicely and humanely to people does not help. Do you actually connect with your people?

Just look at external equity and the compensation levels of rivals. Also, apart from money, employees also look for other benefits and factors of satisfaction.

Finally, as mentioned before, employees leave because of organizational culture, ethos, etc., which even a good manager cannot control.

Regards,
Suman Banerjee

Strategies for Employee Retention

For the retention of particular employees, an organization needs to strive more and more towards building a good corporate culture. This includes implementing different programs for employees, offering periodic gifts, and organizing celebrations to make them feel like a part of the company. Openness and a sense of belongingness may sometimes serve the purpose.

Regards

Dear Mr. Kannan, you are right that people usually leave organizations within 2 years for better compensation, but please let me know why companies' HR departments do not offer competitive salaries at the time of hiring these individuals. In my opinion, if a person is hired at a good salary, they are more likely to stay with the organization for a longer period. In today's scenario, where individuals frequently switch companies for higher pay, it makes sense to invest in hiring the right talent at a competitive salary. This can potentially discourage them from leaving due to the attractive package and benefits offered by the current company.

I may be mistaken in my perception, but this seems to be the prevailing trend today.

Regards,
Amit Pathak

Apart from what has been said already by others, poaching is a situation you have to live with in today's world. Check the attrition rate for your group/department. Provide for that many replacements. If your relationship has been good, there are that many more people batting for you outside your organization, and if these are technical people, you will have a network that will have exceedingly high value as time passes. Besides, the manager must not remain the sole trainer; he/she should train people so that they, in turn, can train new recruits as they come in. Everyone knows that there is a dearth of employable people today.

Regards,
Devendra Jain

[Email Removed For Privacy Reasons]

The Importance of Stay Interviews

Have you ever heard of a stay interview? Keeping communication open with employees lets you know what they want. While exit interviews help you determine why employees are leaving, stay interviews help you understand why they are staying and what they would like that they are not currently receiving. It could be money, benefits, or engagement. Get to know your employees and what they want. Perhaps even find out what they are getting at other employers that they are not receiving from you. Then you can address the missing component. Some employees appreciate people development, while others are looking for different motivations to stay.

Retaining Talent in a Competitive Environment

There is a manager of a small division within a large company. He identifies and recruits the best people for his division. He is a great people developer and makes significant efforts to enhance the skills of his team. However, as their skills improve, his employees are increasingly poached by other divisions both inside and outside his organization. Despite offering challenging and motivating jobs, the manager struggles to retain his talent. What should the manager do to retain talent?

I agree that organizations have to pay on par with industry standards. First of all, you will not be able to assess all parameters of an individual while you recruit them. For example, if they are the best, we will not be able to assess whether they will stay long enough, and if they stay long enough, will they contribute as much as your existing employees do?

What is the Pay that Will Satisfy Individuals?

If one organization is paying a CTC of, say, 5.0 Lakhs p.a. and another organization is paying, say, 5.5 Lakhs, and your employee decides to leave, then it will be difficult for you to match the CTC of 5.5 Lakhs. If you do so for that particular employee, then what happens to employees who have been loyal to you for several years? Can we go on hiking salaries for all employees at all levels? Just try and work out a pay packet for all employees considering a hypothetical situation when an employee leaves for a pay hike, and the overall cost to the company for all employees will be a mind-blowing number, and HR professionals will be fired for not being able to maintain a check on salaries.

Think one hundred times before we make amendments on monetary matters for employees. If you increase indiscriminately for a particular employee without increasing for others, either the attrition rate will increase, or employees will continue to threaten to resign, and you will have tremendous pressure from all departments. Watch out!!

Regards,
M.V.KANNAN

Make sure you try getting in touch with those people who have already left your organization. Casually ask them what the reason was. At the same time, conduct an internal satisfaction level survey with the existing employees. Include questions such as what would satisfy them more or what they look for in a career—i.e., money, peace, whether they are enjoying their work, etc. This list will help you know whom you need to groom and whom not. Even if you try to develop people and they leave, let them leave; they were never worth it. But somewhere, will they miss you? So, chill and thanks for asking this question.