How to Hire and Retain Top Performers

Talent is one of the biggest assets of any company, especially top performing employees. We all know the people that we can count on every day to get things done and who we couldn’t do without.
 
The key question is how to keep top performers motivated, engaged and loyal to your company. The cost to hire employees who leave is significant, but losing high performers goes beyond that. Every person is different, so there is no singular method for keeping top performing employees. The key is learning about what motivates each person and how to best keep a person engaged.
 
You can learn about how a person is wired by using an assessment like AcuMax, the results will breakdown what kinds of assignments, collaborative environments, and motivational factors best speak to the top performer you’re trying to keep. For example, if the candidate you’re trying to keep really needs freedom and autonomy in the way they work you can think about projects that you can assign to them to let them drive on their own in the way that they deem best.
 
If you’re trying to identify top performing employees during an interview process you may also want to look at their hard-wiring for some insight. Additional traits to look for include being able to be accountable, self-motivated, willing to learn and teach what they know, open to challenges, communicative, transparent and proactive.
 
Hard-wiring reports are also helpful in finding out whether a person matches these traits and is likely to be a good employee. It can be difficult in an interview situation to assess these kinds of characteristics, and candidates may know the buzzwords to say that align with what you like to hear. For example, most candidates are going to assume that companies are looking for someone who is flexible and open to change, but not everyone is wired that way or will acknowledge that they aren’t the best in those kinds of environments.
 
Another thing to be mindful of is that top performing employees are also candidates that are in demand and who have options available to them to easily leave. If your work environment doesn’t meet their needs, they will seek and find an organization that does. While it may seem like extra effort to carefully hire and individually motivate high performers, it is worth it to keep them loyal to your organization because of the return on the investment that they provide.

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