This past June, Deloitte had over 1,000 people (CFO’s, COO’s, presidents, directors, vice presidents and HR executives) attend a webcast on talent retention.

The discussion was a result of Deloitte’s Talent 2020 survey. While the results are from global organizations when it comes to the topic of talent; how to get the right people and how to keep them, across the board the concerns are the same with every organization.

The web cast participants showed a low voluntary rate of turnover in the majority (47.3%) of their organizations is less than 10%. The participants believe that Millennial’s (ages 16 -31) are the ones leaving their organization. The reason’s they leave: lack of career progress AND dissatisfaction with their current supervisor or manager.

So how are these organizations getting them to stay and what can you learn from their programs? Two of the top three incentives is monetary, such as additional bonuses, financial incentives and additional compensation. Because it is short sighted to rely just on money as a long term retention strategy companies are also offering more work-life flexibility programs.

If you want your organization to thrive in today’s competitive environment you cannot give way to complacency with regard to your high retention numbers. Organizations can no longer implement broad retention strategies; customization and individual retention strategies will keep you in the competitive game of business and help you keep the key talent you need to stay ahead.

As I stated in a previous blog post Develop Your People or Watch Them Leave  now is the time to provide key employees with meaningful work – your employees want to add value to the organization. 42% of employees that are currently looking for another position say it’s because their current job does not make good use of their skills and abilities. If you aren’t sure where to start to learn what motivates your people and what their current skills and abilities are take a look at the TriMetrixHD assessment. This tool will provide you valuable information on how to develop, reward and retain your key employees. Contact us if you would like help in implementing this tool into your business.

So how can leaders persuade their current employees to stay with the organization?

1. Utilize your employees talents – if you aren’t completely sure what these are I encourage you to find out.
2. Provide meaningful projects or other stretch assignments for them to work on.
3. Let them “write their own job description” and incorporate some of their ideas into their daily work.
4. Let them cross train or work with other departments or on other projects where they can add value.

Leaders, the time to be complacent about your employees has past. Don’t get a false sense of hope that the job market is tight and your employees have no place else to go. Start today by polling your people on how they feel about the organization, their job and changes that they would like to see incorporated in both.

Humans like to over complicate things. Just ask your employees “How can I help you?” As leaders it’s then your responsibility to remove the roadblocks. Believe me this type of collaboration will benefit employees AND employers all day long. Besides you can’t just sit around with your fingers crossed hoping your best talent is going to stay with your company. Hope is not a retention strategy.