Need to retain talent

Do we have the talent we need to be successful? Unfortunately, we seldom ask this question to ourselves.

One of the most important metrics in the HR Scorecard is to maintain talent, often neglected by the management.

We implement planned and preventive maintenance to safeguard our machines. We often do services to ensure efficient operations in production.

Do we follow the same principle to deal with our workers? Do we retain staff even at a time of crisis? Does your company have a strategy to motivate your competent managers?

The majority of employers fail to understand the importance of staff retention - a concrete foundation to the organisational structure. Of course, this is the time to remember management theorist Peter Senge, who has suggested the laws of systems thinking! Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions.

Three years ago, a company had mounting pressure from the owners to cut costs. They terminated a large number of competent staff. Some core jobs were removed from the payrolls.

Supportive roles were declared surplus. The whole re-structuring process was considered painful. It was merely a fire-fighting approach. No one in the company had the guts to stop it.

At least, the HR manager should have pointed out the links between retention and growing business. He did not, because he was not a strategic thinker.

To no one's surprise, that company is now facing a leadership crisis. The HR department is stuck with a development and recruitment problem. They have a business plan, but not the dedicated drivers to move the plan forward.

It may be easy to implement employment contracts at the time of restructuring - using the provisions of the notice period of one or three months.

What happened to those talents that have grown along with aspirations? Is it not an accumulated wealth? Don't you think that the intellectual wealth is your company's asset?

Here we must note that mere contracts will not bind our ties with the company. More than this, commitment, zeal, loyalty, initiative and morale are necessary. All these will help to nurture talent fast, which will ultimately end up as organisational competencies.

Talent cannot be fully developed through training. It is inherent with our mindset and grows in line with the treatment given by the management.

Our principles and ethics always ensure that talent will grow in line with our business. It is a right way of linking the people strategy with performance.

Why don't firms consider the difference between physical and intellectual capital? It is possible to buy big and sophisticated machines. But is it possible to use them effectively?

We may lose some projects. We may lose money. But we should not lose our talents.

If HR talent is retained, the staff and their skills can bring back business relatively quickly. But a company that has lost its skilled workforce, while retaining tangible assets, will never recover.

Pon Mohaideen Pitchai is a Dubai-based HRD consultant