Imagine cutting your workforce then losing your best people? New data shows that top talent in many companies already have one foot out the door. But with eight pragmatic interventions outlined in this just-released book (October 12th), a company vying for “employer of choice” can hold tight to a bright future and beyond.
The source: Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business is Down, Sylvia Hewlett, Harvard Business School Press, 2009. Know that I’ve put this book at the top of my reading list. Lured in by the dramatic drop in top talent loyalty in the short time of this recession - from 95% to 56% - makes me think drugs are involved. That, sloppy research, or the sample size is the number of people walking on the beach today. (Unusually cool on the Gulf Coast right now. Number of people barefoot on the beach. N=30)
Why am I concerned? Because this is a pretty dramatic dive to be reported during a time when most everyone is working their butts off. How were these statistics gathered? Since productivity is up despite the number of people gone, who is taking time to be interviewed for a study? Fill out a survey? (Yeah, right - put that right at the top of my to-do list. ) Oh, strategy sessions? (In a big room or a little room?)
Still, we have to be hopeful that there are valuable, smart, do-able ideas here because the author does have “cred.” An economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, Hewlett directs the “Hidden Brain Drain”—a task force of 35 global companies committed to fully realize female and minority talent over the lifespan. She is the author of six critically acclaimed nonfiction books and her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton Universities and held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, she earned her Ph.D. degree in economics at London University.
(whew) Still, you never should believe book-hype, so I’ll just report that we might have some big findings for companies who are working on today’s challenges caused by the economy and still want to stay smart about the future.
If I hadn’t left my Kindle on an airplane last week, we’d know more. While another Kindle ships from Amazon, here are two of those eight interventions to appease you:
- Re-create pride: Give employees reasons to feel good about their company by recommitting to social responsibility and lifiting up success stories.
- Provide meaningful non-monetary rewards: Use time as money.
(That last one sounds like a sabbatical program to me.) Stay tuned, and hope I like the Kindle2. Meanwhile, why do I feel creepy being so judgemental about information touted in a Harvard blog?
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