Your Best Employees Are Always in
Play. Another Retention Bonus Won’t Keep Them
The
single most corrosive sentence you’ll hear from a talented person is that they
have no idea of what their future is at the company.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING
PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN
Every successful
business builder I know brags about his passionate and dedicated team. Deep
talent, contagious commitment, and lifetime loyalty. But when key players pick
up and abruptly leave, the owners and managers are still shocked. This isn’t a
new occurrence. For decades, just when a company started to hit its stride and
grow, the first folks who showed up weren’t more customers. They were
recruiters.
Even your best employees
aren’t wholly resistant to the sometimes-bogus blandishments and promises of
big bucks being constantly whispered in their ears. While eager entrepreneurs
may think their company is one big family, their employees know it’s a business
like any other and that, while they may love the company, it rarely loves them
back. Just ask the 25 percent of Microsoft employees—60,000 individuals
worldwide—who just got buyout offers last week.
And with the constantly
mounting pressure today to find qualified A.I. experts and senior technical
people in general, and lots of stupid VC cash floating around, many businesses
are finding that poaching is a lot better, faster, and even cheaper in the long
run than waiting years while they try to grow their own in-house skill sets. In
physical labor, the best workers are twice as productive as the ordinary ones,
but in creative work and building the future, the best people are ten times
more valuable than the average ones. One rabbit beats a dozen turtles.
To be perfectly honest,
you can’t outlaw poaching, you can’t shame it out of existence, and you can’t
keep trying to paper over it with another one-off retention bonus. If your team
leaders are getting picked off, that’s a lagging indicator that you waited too
long to work on and keep upping the ante on the basics: trust, transparency,
development, and real opportunity. Retaining key employees isn’t robbing the
bank to pay them or building a higher wall to keep them. It’s about building a
better place.
Retention isn’t a
periodic emergency—it’s got to be a daily discipline and a central part of your
overall business plan. Your best people are always in play. They
are visible, valuable, and constantly being told by outsiders how
under-appreciated they must be. You can’t kill the conversations, but you can
try your best to make staying with you the smartest, safest, and most
satisfying choice for your key employees.
Here’s how I would work
to actually move the needle in your direction.
Step 1: Plan and
document a progress path for each team member
The single most
corrosive sentence you’ll hear from a talented person is that they have no idea
of what their future is at the company. The moment they’re worried about that,
they’re already halfway out the door. Every key player needs a written,
specific progress path. Not a generic career ladder pasted off an HR site, but
a real plan with names, dates, and milestones. What new responsibilities do
they take on in the next 6–12–18 months? What skills do they need to build?
What has to be true for them to move from where they are to the next level of
impact and compensation?
A written path does
three powerful things. First, it proves you’re paying attention. Second, it
creates a shared scoreboard you can both point to. Third, it forces you to
decide who are actually “key” players.
No one should have to
guess what “good” looks like or where they could be in two years if they keep
delivering. If you haven’t mapped that with them, someone else is already doing
it for you.
Step 2: Share the
vision, what it will take, and why it’s worth it
High performers want
three answers: Where are we going? What will it really take to get there? And
why should I care enough to give you my best years?
Your key people want specifics. What does the next phase of this business
actually look like? How hard is it going to be? What trade-offs are we really
making? And where do they personally fit into that story?
You also have to explain
why it’s worth it in concrete terms that matter to them: the kind of company
they’ll help build, the customers they’ll impact, the skills, equity, and
credibility they’ll walk away with.
If your story is
constantly shifting, and the recruiter’s story is sharp, simple, and
compelling, you lose. Retention is a narrative contest. The company with the
clearest and most honest story about the future usually wins. The irony is that
telling the truth—even when it’s tough—actually helps. Saying that this next
year is going to be brutal, but if we nail it, here’s what changes for the
company and for you is dramatically more attractive to serious talent than
pretending everything is easy.
Step 3: Provide the
tools, training, and resources they need to succeed
Nothing burns people out
faster than being held accountable for outcomes without the tools to achieve
them. Your best people are naturally hard on themselves. They don’t need you to
pile on. What they do need is for you to arm them properly. That means current
hardware and software, current data, access to decision-makers, and the
authority to actually fix what they’re responsible for.
It also means real
training. Not once-a-year compliance theater, but targeted skill-building that
matches their progress paths. If you say someone is on a path to run a larger
team, what leadership and management training are they getting now? If you say
they’re being groomed to own a product line, what financial, market, and
strategic exposure are you giving them?
The people who are most
frustrated by lousy tools and broken processes are your highest performers.
Mediocre players can live with mess. Great people cannot. If you don’t fix the
friction, someone else will invite them to go do great work on a cleaner playing
field.
Step 4: Monitor and
measure progress and provide regular feedback
A written path and a
shared vision are only useful if you keep coming back to them. You need a
simple, visible system for monitoring progress and giving real-time feedback.
The cadence has to be regular and predictable. Monthly or at least quarterly,
you sit down one-on-one and look at the path you documented together. What’s on
track, what’s behind, what got in the way, and what needs to change on both
sides?
The feedback has to be
specific and bilateral. You tell them exactly what they’re doing that is making
a difference, what’s not acceptable, and what “better” looks like. And then—and
this is where most managers fail—you ask them what they need from you and from
the company to move faster.
High performers crave
clarity. They don’t want to be surprised when you finally confess that you’ve
been unhappy with their performance. They want the early warning, the coaching,
and the chance to fix it. If your strongest people only hear from you when
there’s a fire drill or when you need a favor, they’ll eventually conclude that
their growth is not a priority.
Step 5: Recognize and
reward the best—and boot the rest
This is the step where
most leaders drop the ball because they’re conflict avoiders. You can’t retain
A players in a system that tolerates C behavior. Recognition is comparative.
Your best people are always running their own internal scorecard. They’re watching
who gets promoted, who gets the stretch assignments, who gets the raises and
options, and yes, who never seems to face consequences for chronic
under-performance.
You need visible,
meaningful rewards for top performance: faster advancement, more autonomy,
richer learning opportunities, real economic participation in the value they
create. This means real differentiation. Your message has to be unmistakable:
excellence is noticed here and paid for here.
On the other hand, you
have to be willing to move out the chronic low performers, the cultural
terrorists, and the coasters. Keeping them around to avoid conflict is one of
the most expensive retention mistakes you can make. Nothing drives stars away
faster than being forced to carry people who don’t care and won’t change.
“Boot the rest” doesn’t mean heartless, impulsive firing. It means honest
performance management, tight standards, clear expectations, and real
consequences. When your best people see that you’re serious about who gets to
stay on the bus, they’re far more likely to keep betting on you.
Richard Branson said it best and it’s still the most succinct formula for
success: “Train people well enough so they can leave; treat them well enough so
they don’t want to”. To which I’d add: “Be a place that keeps its promises” and
the rest will take care of itself.