Knock, Knock. Who's There? Amazon

Oh boy. When I wrote several weeks ago about Lessons Learned from Amazon on Delivering Talent I did not see this coming.

If you missed the news, Amazon more than doubled its max base pay to $350k for corporate and tech workers, citing labor market.

Here’s what this means for you.

Amazon is coming for your talent, and if your pay rates haven’t kept up with the market, they’re not going to have a hard time getting what they came for.

So, how do you hold onto talent if you can’t afford to double pay across the board?

A Three-Step Approach to Employee Retention

The first step is to identify employees who are flight risks that are worth keeping.

Individuals in this group include:

·?????those with rare but essential skills

·?????extensive contacts

·?????a history of adding value to the organization

·?????top performers

·?????those with essential experience

·?????innovators

·?????revenue generators

·?????magnetic leaders

Focusing your retention efforts on these employees makes sense because it’s extremely costly and can be crippling to lose their outstanding business abilities.?

Step two is about getting ahead of turnover.

Much of your employee turnover is preventable.

People say all the time, “If only I knew, I could have prevented this from happening. The good news is that you can learn what your employees are thinking and take steps to keep those worth keeping.

I recently completed a project for a client where I interviewed (notice how I didn’t say surveyed) a large sector of their workforce to learn more about what was on their mind. Knowing this allowed my client to take steps to correct problems that would have resulted in a loss of treasured talent.

Step three is to clean house so you can focus on your keepers.

I bet you right now; you have people in your organization that you’d throw a going away party for if they gave notice tomorrow. If you lost these people, there would be minimal negative or even a positive business impact.

These employees may fall under one or more of the following categories:

Toxic-You may only have one toxic employee in your organization, but that one person can do a whole lot of damage on their own. Losing them will improve the overall work environment and will increase team productivity. Don’t spend time or money trying to keep these people. Figure out a way to get them out of your organization—now!

Low performing employees-These are people who are barely pulling their weight or sometimes doing very little to add value to the organization. You may think that the devil you know is better than the one you don’t know or that it will be impossible to replace this person. If you’ve got an excellent recruitment strategy in place, replacing a low performers with someone better is always an option.

Weak managers-People don’t leave companies. They leave their leaders. If you don’t have time or the resources to get these managers where they need to be, in terms of leadership, then show them the door. They’re blocking others from moving up in the organization, and you are at risk of losing some of your best people who will leave because of poor management.

Just think about all the extra money you could reallocate to those worth keeping if you were no longer paying people who were no longer earning their keep.

Here’s your assignment this week:

1. Jot down the names of every employee who is worth keeping.
2. Write down what you plan on doing to ensure they remain in your employ.
3. Have your managers identify any employee who is no longer worth keeping employed.
4. Create a plan to help transition these people out of the organization as soon as possible.

Schedule a call with me if you’re at the point where you’re ready to lock down your talent and prevent companies like Amazon from getting what they came for. ?

? Matuson Consulting, 2022.