RETENTION
Employers urged to adopt market-driven retention strategies
You might have imagined that in today's war for talent most companies would be fighting to minimise employee turnover. But you would have reckoned without the radical views of Professor Peter Cappelli and a clutch of progressive-thinking companies that are abandoning conventional wisdom. His message: more and more businesses need to focus on highly-targeted retention strategies.
Cappelli, professor of management at the Wharton school, Pennsylvania, told an audience of HR and reward professionals in London that the days of one-size-fits-all retention programmes are gone forever. Rather than throwing more money at the problem and tinkering with career paths, training plans and compensation programmes, Cappelli says his research has led him to embrace the notion of market-driven retention strategies.
Manage the flow
His thinking challenges some enduring tenets underpinning conventional wisdom. Cappelli's central thesis is that long-term loyalty is neither possible nor desirable in all cases.
You should be influencing who leaves and when, he told delegates to the conference, organised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The key question is can you manage the flow. Can you decide when they leave and who leaves?
Tailor your retention approaches
Cappelli urged the delegates to be explicit about who you want to keep .
In any company there will be some employees who will always be valuable because they have outstanding qualities. Others with skills that are in demand, or who are members of a current team, need to be retained for a set period. Then there are those in jobs that are easy to fill, requiring few skills, where there is no sense in spending money on retaining them.
So retention strategies — covering everything from compensation to flexibility, career opportunities to location — need to be tailored to stop the brightest staff deserting.
About the compensation forum conference
The CIPD's annual compensation conference is arguably the UK's premier gathering of reward professions, attracting over 200 delegates each year. It offers a showcase for some of the latest thinking and practices in reward management. The Institute prides itself on the quality of management speakers it attracts for its annual gathering. The line-up for this year's event was no exception — topping the bill was Mervyn King, deputy governor of the Bank of England.
Among other luminaries contributing to the debate were Richard Freeman, a renowned US academic, and Hay's Vicky Wright. The conference also featured numerous case studies including: BP Amoco, FI Group, Oracle, and PepsiCo.
Want to know more?
Why not take a look at Professor Cappelli's recent piece for People Management.
Title: Easy come, easy go, by Peter Cappelli, People Management, 8 February 2001.
Availability: contact the People Management subscriptions department, tel: 01795 414864 or jump to PM online . . . www.peoplemanagement.co.uk
We also recommend you read Cappelli's nine-page article for Harvard Business Review.
Title: A market-driven approach to retaining top talent by Peter Cappelli, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2000.
Availability: To subscribe to Harvard Business Review jump to . . . www.hbsp.harvard.edu/subscriptions/hbr/index.html