What you need to know to keep your top talent working for you

Leaders get held to the fire in the fourth quarter.
Between hitting your year-end budget, keeping your staff productive through the holiday months and planning for the upcoming year, the next few months can be pretty tense at work. There are deadlines to hit, numbers to make and year-end goals to accomplish. The pressure is on, and now is the time to make it count.
When it comes to filling critical openings in your business, the potential pool of candidates is getting smaller and candidates are getting harder to find. The catch is, once you get the right person in the door, you have got to make sure you keep them.
Your job as the leader of your company is to realize this and seize the opportunity to build your internal team to get to a stronger place by the end of the year. Unsure of how you can capitalize on this?
Here are the strategies that I use when faced with this issue:
Get to know your current workforce
What’s the median age group within your organization? Is the majority of your workforce of the millennial age range or baby boomer range? Are your employees focused on short-term or long-term goals? What motivates your team?
Position your company to your advantage
If your team is motivated by money (i.e. promotions or bonuses), focus your internal teams on monetary goals — contests that recognize performance with an immediate reward. Align your internal career paths with significant percentage increases attached to each position. If your team is motivated by recognition or praise, turn your internal communication strategies into a cheerleading squad.
Use your internal newsletters or blogs to highlight an employee that is outperforming his teammates. If your team is motivated by work/life balance, give them the opportunity to have a flexible schedule. Give them the option to drop the kids off at school and then work later into the evening. Go out of your way to accommodate your team and their needs.
Keep them engaged
Build your internal community to a place where your team feels supported and valued every day. Develop a learning and development program that takes your employees from their orientation day all the way to leadership roles. Make this program clear and easy to understand — and then market it internally.
Give your internal managers the task of dedicating themselves to cultivating their own bench strength, and then filling it with as many employees as they can.
Your workforce is your best tool to hitting your year-end goals.
It is worth the time and effort to truly understand who they are and what drives them in the workplace.
The knowledge you can potentially gain from this will be monumental to connecting with them and hitting your key performance indicators in the upcoming months. When you and your team are in sync, obstacles seem easier to tackle because your team is stronger and deeper than ever before. ●