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4 ways to retain executive talent

 

As employees are gearing up for the new year, now is a great time to reevaluate your executive retention strategies. Or, to create them if you haven’t given this area much focus.

Industries continue to change nationwide with the introduction of new technologies and shifting priorities, so approaches to retention are worth a second look. Fortune reported this year that CEO turnover was higher than it’s ever been nationwide.

To help avoid executive turnover, consider focusing your retention plan around these tips.

1. It’s all about flexibility
Work-life balance is both more popular and more doable in today’s workplace with video conferencing and employee laptop computers. At the executive level, employees especially care about having the flexibility to work from home or to shift their schedule to deal with family obligations.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) conducted research that showed 96 percent of employees want flexibility, but only 47 percent actually get it. So providing lots of work-life balance options could help retain top talent.

2. Engage and challenge
Executive hires will want to be challenged. Their many years of experience have not led them to be stagnant, so ensure you’re providing both enough work and enough responsibility for them to remain busy and engaged with ideas.

3. Focus on diversity and inclusion
Diverse workplaces are a must in our nation’s current climate. But HBR stated that companies should take diversity a step further and focus on inclusion, too. This may involve researching to get a better grasp on the demographics of your workplace.

Try to be inclusive of all relevant cultural holidays, for instance. This shows employees you care and that their personal priorities are important to the company.

Make sure you create teams that are diverse, and focus on inclusion.Make sure you create teams that are diverse and focus on inclusion.

Implementing surveys can be an effective way to be sure that everyone’s interests are represented in your decisions. You’ll also be able to discover what percentage of minorities are making their way to the top of the company and reassess recruitment strategies accordingly. HBR gave the example of Baker McKenzie, a law firm that figured out women made up only 23 percent of the firm’s 1,510 partners.

Such research can help companies retain talent – sometimes just acknowledging these deficiencies and showing executives and employees that you care will encourage people to stay.

4. Encourage risk-taking
Gone are the days when executives can say, “We’ve always done it that way” to govern a decision, Forbes said. Encourage top employees to instead think in new ways and try a new direction. This will both move the company forward and allow these executives to use their own creativity to create solutions.

Doing things the way they’ve always been done is what leads to a lack of diversity, challenge and flexibility, which are all priorities for modern executives.

At YES Partners, we make it easy to find someone who will help steer your company in the direction of innovation. To see some of the roles we have already successfully placed, click here.

Finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is not. YES Partners helps companies FIND the right people for all company functions, across many industries.

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