Now You’ve Got Them. How Do You Keep Them? 3 Keys to Retaining Employees

Congratulations! You have found and hired an A-Player. Now what? How do you keep this employee around? Keeping your top employees happy and engaged will take some time on your part, but the payoff is well worth the investment. Obviously, proper training is important to getting your employees off to a good start. But that is only part of the equation for keeping A-Players and getting top performance from you’re A-Players. Here are 3 keys to keeping you’re A-Players that many business owners overlook.

Communication is key. Set up regular 1:1 meetings with employees reporting directly to you. Make sure your managers are doing the same with employees reporting to them. Ideally, these meetings should happen weekly.

These weekly 1:1 meetings become the opportunity for you to get to know your direct reports, coach them for higher and higher goal attainment, and provide on-going feedback about their performance.

These weekly meetings are also “containers” for all the questions your direct reports will have for you. You will find that the interruptions from employees with questions will diminish considerably when you maintain these weekly meetings.

A-Players like to be challenged. Don’t hesitate to delegate to them. Many a business owner has hired a great new employee with a lot of potential and then told me that he or she did not want to “overwhelm” the new employee with too much responsibility. That’s certainly a good intention, but how will you really know if your employee is overwhelmed?

Again, communication is key. Let your employee know that you believe in her ability, and that you expect her to speak up if she is overwhelmed by the responsibilities that have been delegated.

Clarify what “A-Player Performance” really means to you. Take the time to clarify the specific outcomes and results you are wanting your employees to produce for you, and in what time frame. Communicate these expectations verbally and in writing. Then, step back and give your employees the latitude to produce these results in whatever way works for them. Avoid micromanaging you’re A-Players. Micromanagement is the slow kiss of death to an A-Player’s motivation.

There is one caveat to this: it is critical that you have articulated your Immutable Laws and hired employees who embody your Immutable Laws. If you have done so, it is much easier to give employees latitude to figure out their own ways of getting the results you are looking for. Here’s an example to illustrate this.

Let’s say you have hired Matt, a new saleperson. You’ve told Matt you expect to see a 10% increase in sales over the next quarter. You will let Matt determine how he wants to do that and you intend to support his efforts through your weekly 1:1 meetings and coaching.

You value honesty and integrity seeking to sell your customers only what they need. Unfortunately, you did not do a thorough job of ascertaining if Matt is a good fit with your Immutable Laws. Although you’ve communicated these Immutable Laws to Matt, and he nodded along in agreement during the interview, Matt values earning his commission above integrity in selling customers only what they truly need. Uh-oh. There is trouble ahead.

As Matt goes about hitting the goal of increasing sales by 10% during the next quarter, you begin hearing from other employees that Matt is a great “up-seller.” At first all seems good. Then you get a call from an angry, long-standing customer who feels Matt really pressured him into buying an expensive part that he did not need.

A week goes by, and you observe Matt talking with another customer who you know very well. Again, you hear Matt “up-sell” this customer on an expensive, additional service that this customer really does not need. As the customer hesitates, you listen as Matt pours on the sales pitch. Inwardly, your stomach knots up.

You have a dilemma on your hands. While Matt is hitting the goal you set for him, he is doing it in a way that makes you very uncomfortable. He is not representing you or your business in the way you want to be represented.

To give A-Players the latitude to determine how they will get you the results you are seeking, you must do the work ON your business first, and incorporate solid screening techniques to make sure you are hiring employees who hold core values similar to your business’ Immutable Laws.

About The Author

Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist and international best-selling author of the How to Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation™, is the founder of Tap the Potential and host of the Profit by Design podcast. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business.

We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Clients in our Better Business, Better Life coaching program have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. Next, we send them off on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate their hard-earned journey to take their life back!

Dr. Sabrina and her team at Tap the Potential are on a mission to change the story of entrepreneurship from one of long hours, grinding it out, to one of sustainably profitable businesses that support and enhance life. The Tap the Potential Solution™ and our Tap the Potential Family of Business Owners are disrupting small business as usual. We are on our way to making the Tap the Potential Solution™ the mainstream model for growing business.

By 2023, 150 Tap the Potential clients will have taken 4 Week Vacations. These are the trailblazers, role modeling what’s possible for entrepreneurs. In many entrepreneurial circles, it is becoming more and more common for one entrepreneur to ask another, “Have you taken a 4 Week Vacation™?” (as opposed to asking “How many employees do you have?” or “What is your annual revenue?”). Taking a fully unplugged 4 Week Vacation is rapidly becoming the recognized symbol of entrepreneurial success.

Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Sabrina’s How to Hire the Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. What sprang from her experience working with entrepreneurs in rural areas catapulted her into becoming the world’s leading expert in attracting top talent in small businesses—no matter what hiring challenges those businesses are facing—and earned Tap the Potential’s reputation as the go-to resource for entrepreneurs committed to creating Great Places to Work with thriving coaching cultures and highly engaged team members working from strengths.

As The Business Psychologist, and with her years of driving profit in small businesses, Dr. Sabrina knows what it takes to find, keep, and motivate exceptional performance out of your biggest investment—team members.