Attracting and Keeping Top Performers

According to chief executives and industry recruiters who have been interviewed because of this article, you can find three main areas which to target: the product quality and market position of one's service or product, environment, and compensation.

Leading edge technology and a higher perception of quality will lure top technical and design people, salespeople and support people, all for different reasons. Technology people relish the task of developing something new, and they also need ongoing opportunities for skill enhancement to stay fresh.

As for top level sales people, a solid product means they are able to earn bigger commissions, and their egos are fulfilled when you are on the best edge. And top support folks are smart enough to learn a quality product makes everyone's job easier, also it enables them to earn their incentives. For everybody, superior products will earn your organization better returns, enabling more reinvestment in R&D, providing challenges and adventure for the technical people, and much more and better product for the sales and marketing team.

What if your product isn't cutting-edge, or your quality not around snuff? Attractive to top performers won't be your only problem. If you don't control an adult market niche, your organization will have to update and upgrade to stay viable - this involves high caliber people. In order to survive available on the market you need to concentrate harder on another two factors.

Environmental factors - the organization culture, the grade of co-workers, the attitude of one's management team, as well as your physical environment could be pivotal to find and retaining talented people.

Corporate culture is one area smaller companies have an advantage - that "hell-bent-for-leather" attitude helps it be exciting and challenging to come quickly to work, and you can find fewer layers of bureaucracy people find so stifling. Real teamwork, where success is shared and the team affirms a standard commitment, will draw other top professionals.

Having a good, talented staff will captivate more smart, talented people. So will a collegial atmosphere which values the opinions of the rank-and-file alongside open-management policies keeping the troops informed on the state-of-the-company.

A training plan, designed career paths and professional conference attendance tend to be more methods to attract and keep people. Other small but significant options include dress code, flextime, telecommuting, offices with walls - all of these help.

Last may be the problem of compensation. The big salary problem is not any matter just how much you pay, a competitor pays a bit more. So with regards to salary level itself, you merely need to be at or near your market rate.

What does all of this mean in real terms? A few of the ideas in this post are harder to implement than others, plus some describe conditions you merely can't achieve. Should you request every item mentioned previously? Needless to say not, but systematically providing your people who have the task to be their finest, the opportunity to understand, the freedom to be creative, the incentives to execute and produce, a sense of ownership, and the respect as professionals - they are things that can make top technical and sales representatives desire to join your organization, and also have them stay.