Keeping the People Who Keep You in Business: 24 Ways to Hang On to Your Most Valuable Talent

Today's worker shortage is painful enough, but compounded by other employment realities--resignations on short notice, sudden disappearances by new hires, through-the-roof recruitment costs, associated customer and staff disruptions--it's enough to make anyone handling personnel feel as if they're in a war. That's exactly the premise advanced by employee-retention specialist Leigh Branham, whose Keeping the People Who Keep You in Business offers a very workable plan for victory in a workforce battle with no immediate end in sight. It details 24 Retention Practices that Branham developed and organized around the principles of attracting ("be a company that people want to work for"), selecting ("select the right people in the first place"), integrating ("get them off to a great start") and coaching ("coach and reward to sustain commitment"). Each, from "Adopt a 'Give-and-Get-Back' Philosophy" to "Have More Fun," recommends specific programs to help achieve its stated goal, and offers real-life examples of these activities in action at both megacorporations like Charles Schwab and Mirage Resorts and smaller firms including a Charlotte, North Carolina, print shop and a San Francisco architectural firm. "Reducing turnover takes commitment," as Branham says, and this book includes a useful collection of techniques and tools that actually could make it happen. --Howard Rothman