What are the most effective strategies for retaining top talent among your partners?

The most effective strategies for retaining top talent among employees involve a combination of competitive compensation, ongoing professional development opportunities, a positive and inclusive work environment, recognition and appreciation of achievements, and clear communication of company vision and values. Providing a supportive culture that encourages work-life balance and offers avenues for career advancement is also crucial. Engaging regularly with employees to understand their needs, aspirations, and feedback, and acting on this information to make continuous improvements, helps in building a strong sense of loyalty and commitment.

One should always focus on value addition because that's the very core of having a great relationship with clients. When someone make a little extra efforts to make a business work, it doesn't go unnoticed. Lets say if you supposed to deliver x services in y amount and if you deliver x+z, that extra z will take you to places but while doing that I believe one needs to make sure that he doesn't boasts about that he has provided z extra. Subtly doing a little extra will always take you long miles.

In my experience, the primary strategies that can be deployed to attract and retain top talent among your partners is to identify a win-win proposition that starts with your partner in mind. For some this may seem odd; however, what's worked time and time again for me when establishing or nurturing partnerships is to focus early or envision what would the biggest win look like for them, based on what I know about the group's work (past successes and opportunities). By taking this approach, I was better able to establish a trusting relationship, establish goals that were mutually beneficial, accelerate our planning efforts and accomplish goals that elevated the mission of both organizations and highlighted the value of collaboration.

Alignment of mutually agreeable KIPs is often the most painful, but necessary process to ensure that there are no disputes down the road.

One thing I have found helpful is to always come back to the purpose of the partnership and the shared values that keep the partnership going. Trust and empathy keeps you moving and they also deliver those KPI's you need.

It can be challenging to recognise the team financially especially in current public sector. It is therefore more important than ever to acknowledge good work publicly, celebrating not just individual but team work and ensuring this is recognised by senior leadership too.

One key strategy for retaining top talent among partners is ensuring that there are open lines of communication at all times. This sets the foundation for being about to provide both feedback and recognition. These are critical to ensuring that the relationship becomes relational versus transactional. The premise is to build a partnership that will stand the test of time and more importantly stand the test of any disagreements that may arise in the future. With respect to recognition, opportunities should be sought highlight and elevate the partnership and the work being carried out by your partner. It just speaks volumes to partners who feel that they are valued, appreciated for the contributions that they are making.

The secret sauce to motivation: bring visibility to their work. Recognise them on slack channels, internal newsletters and give value to team mates who go out of their way to make things happen. At the same time, giving feedback is an art. You need to recognise and give them a path for the next steps. Good feedback can actually change the path of someone’s career.

What I try to stick to is to always recognize in public and always criticize in private. You don't want to embarrass people your own success is dependent on.

A point that is probably a great positive point for the work of talent retention and, although it is more subjective and sometimes more delicate, - making the other feel valued is the practice of an exercise that, when practiced, effectively and actively, is listening. It may seem demagogy, but who does not identify with someone who is, with an open chest, attentive to what is being said by you? While you are listening, do you not appear to be formulating the answer to offer you without having finished the audition? Maybe it’s a current symptom. Time, always to be optimized. You position yourself as the “leader of some pack”. It may be seen as demerit to hear and not be heard. But Is it possible to only follow instructions from manuals?

A third strategy for retaining top talent is to foster trust and collaboration. This is one of the important strategies of them all because without it, the partnership will never achieve its greatest potential. Moreover, it will lead to many distractions that take both partners away from the work at hand. That said, fostering trust and collaboration can occur through each partner understanding the needs and expectations of each other at the onset, this includes having an awareness of their preferred communication style. I would include also a discussion about how they define success or failure. If the partnership moves forward, then identifying a schedule for communication that works for all, is important but leave space to be flexible.

Actually I think trust and collaboration is built and fostered outside the project scope. Spend a lot of time together, tease each other, laugh together, simply have fun. Forget targets and deliverables for an hour and you'll gain at least a week's work of high-quality output from the team.

With so much hybrid working this is more important than ever. Creating strong teams through trust and respect fosters a collaborative environment. This can be through little things like creating social activities, through to bigger things by developing productive team meetings where staff can share projects and learning

The King's Fund recently published "The Practice of Collaborative Leadership: Across health and care services" notes that creating a safe, inclusive and trusting health care environment in which everyone can contribute fully is critical for building healthy relationships, strengthening connections between organisations and individuals and leading to increased staff engagement and more coordinated services. Introducing processes that create a more open and participatory environment can also be useful to enable individuals to think differently and to promote an integrated care mindset, empowering and strengthening shared decision-making and trust across a collaborating group. Technology and data governance have key roles in this new culture.

We want to work with trustworthy, high integrity talent. They may not have all the answers, but are willing to find out new ways of solving a problem. The definition of integrity is simple: do they do what they say they’d do. Those are the players one should foster and nurture.

When it comes to development and goal all needs in terms of behavioural or skill based goals are successfully catered and achieved. From basic confidence to leadership is touched via defining the competencies and addressing the goals simultaneously. The organisation whose priority is development of any employee horizontally and vertically contributes in the most valuable transformation.

Learning and development is a key component of an individual’s journey. Give your team mates access to: ? Coaching ? Courses ? Community To build their skills and stay relevant in the VUCA world.

In my experience, respect for your partners life demands is essential to creating long term retention and loyalty: - Diversity is not always equal to inclusion: Making sure that your organisational culture is inclusive as well as positive is important. - Diversity of thought should be as encouraged as other types of representation. Creating stifling atmospheres where partners' opinions are not heard is likely to create frustration.

In addition, I've found understanding an employee's current priorities life plays a key role in retaining talent. Depending on where they are in their current situation determines the best strategy - A high-performer without many responsibilities would thrive on recognition, and incentives. And a high performing new parent would prefer flexibility over all else.

Satisfaction is also a moving target in partnerships, much depends on who is managing the partnership from the partner's perspective. Turnover at companies is common, and new people who are brought on may have new challenges or goals that should be integrated into your overal plan. Make the partnership growth focused requires updating of goals and objectives on both sides. While analyzing their performance, also provide qualitative analysis by reaching out and giving them space to both share problems and possibilities. Often partners will see things we cannot, and giving them a voice and a place to also share learnings is key to ongoing growth.

Retaining top talent involves strategies such as providing ongoing training and growth opportunities, recognising and rewarding achievements, offering flexibility and trust, fostering a collaborative and inclusive culture, competitive compensation and benefits, mentorship and feedback, and having clear communication channels.

Always remember that trust and predictability, though related, are often two entirely different things--both being dependent upon whether or not your walk matches your talk.