If You Can’t Hire, Learn to Keep What You Have

Source: Accounting Today

From consultant August Aquila ([email protected]).

Hiring isn’t getting easier. Keeping employees isn’t easy either, but it pays to do all you can. Employee loyalty can be improved if you:

• Imbue your mission, vision, and core values with meaning. (Mission is your reason for existence, vision is what you expect to be in the future, core values are the accepted forms of behavior in your firm.) A statement that you want to be the premier firm in your market is meaningless.
• Let your people know how they contribute to and profit from the firm’s success.
• Let employees have more decision-making authority, even though it worries you.
• Provide employees access to the firm’s intellectual capital.
• Provide an environment in which employees can learn new skills—soft skills as well as technical skills.
• Help employees achieve their dreams.
• Make sure their work is challenging.
• Recognize that while compensation isn’t the number one issue for employees, it’s still very important.

From Accounting Today, July 23, 2007, SourceMedia Inc., One State Street Plaza, 27th Floor, New York, NY 10004, 800-221-1809. For the complete article, click here, then select the article Creating Employee Loyalty.