Six Ways To Motivate Top Talent

As the economy improves and the job market opens up, managers and CEOs need to work to retain their top employees by ensuring they are motivated, engaged and appreciated.

Today and tomorrow, Promotional Consultant Today shares these six ways to motivate top talent and keep them working for you.

1. Companies must have a performance-based culture. Even in difficult times there must be clearly defined goals for the company. These goals must cascade down to your top talent. They must have quantifiable objectives that motivate your employees so that reaching them instills a sense of accomplishment. Providing specific, time-based goals with achievable results clarifies exactly what is expected of your people. Your best talent will embrace the goals and not stop until they reach the goals. Employee engagement is critical to retaining your best people.

2. Culture of teamwork. This is probably the biggest reason top talent gets nervous and begins to think of leaving your company. Do you know your company’s culture? Can you define it? Then once the culture is well defined, do the behaviors match the culture? Do managers from the CEO on down demonstrate this culture day-to-day in how they deal with the employees, customers and vendors? You can’t claim to have a culture of teamwork if the manager’s idea of teamwork is, “As long as we do things my way, without any questions, you can be on my team.”

3. Respect and appreciation. This is probably the least expensive and least-used method to motivate and retain top talent. Small things can make a big difference with top talent. Respecting their contributions, listening to them, including them in the decision-making process, asking for their thoughts and ideas all make them feel respected and appreciated. Consider building a culture that respects your top talent. Top talent does not want to be taken for granted.

Read PCT tomorrow for three more ways to motivate and retain top talent in your company.

Source: Brad Remillard is a speaker, author and trainer with more than 30 years of experience in hiring and recruiting. Through his corporate workshops and industry association speaking engagements he demonstrates how organizations can effectively attract, interview, hire and retain top talent. Remillard is also the co-founder of Impact Hiring Solutions and co-author of You’re NOT the Person I Hired: A CEO’s Guide to Hiring Top Talent.