What makes an employee invaluable? 26

[structineer]

This is a question for those that either run their own business or manage employees. What are your opinions of what makes an employee invaluable? I'm looking for a little more than the typical cliches.

Thank you for your input!

 

[ewh]

Well, if it were my company, I wouldn't want to have to rely on just one or two key people to keep the business successful... many employees may suffer the unintended consequencies should those key people meet misfortune.

Technically, the glass is always full.

 

[patprimmer]

I believe the answer is not to limit training, that means you never have those skills available even if they don't leave.

I think the answer is to have depth in the organisation by having everyone trained up for their next potential advancement and to have several skilled in each task essential for the companies ongoing viability.

Regards
Pat
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[KENAT]

For a very small organization I could imagine that could get tricky though.

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[peppinu]

With today's lean methods, I would say that every employee is invaluable, especially when that person knows the job well and has been trained for it by the company.
I agree fully with Pat. If you do not invest in your employees the whole organisation can become stale. This in return can be used to motivate employees to stay there. Employees are an asset as much as machinery and other physical assets.

Joe Borg

 

[SNORGY]

Who needs to work at a place where they won't train you because they don't want you to become good enough to be able to leave?

Entrapment by the insistence on performance mediocrity.

That is a completely mind-staggering perversion.

Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[jmw]

In the modern world people are far more adept at job hopping.
To expect people to remain in one place for long is unrealistic.
However, if you don't offer incentives to stay for longer you lose useful people quicker than you can train them and get left with the no-hopers.
Training adds value.
It does make people more employable by others.
But it also acts as an incentive to encourage people to stay longer where they can add value to themselves quicker.
The issue then is for the employer to try and come out ahead on the cost benefit side of the game.
Employees with ambitions are often better employees. Not always, but often.
Good employers will recognise that they can attract the best employees if they help those employees meet their own goals which may well be to move on to better jobs.
HR's function is succession planning.
People can do funny things like leave to work for some one else or get run over by buses.
Funnily enough the one area that seems to defeat HR succession planning is retirement. They know that if so and so doesn't get the sack or hand in his notice or get hit by a bus, come his 65th birthday he is out of the door.
Usually HR catch on to this about one or two days before he actually retires.
Plus it seems that the more valuable the employee the closer to retirement before they realise the problem.
Go figure.

It makes you wonder bout working your notice period too.
I can't say I have ever had a constructive well thought out plan put to me for my notice period.
In some companies, if they think you are going to a competitor, they will let you go immediately. I have never understood why because if your leaving is a surprise to them, it isn't to you and if you were going to do anything tricky, you'd have done it already.
The first job I left they decided to keep me as long as possible to spite the competitor I was going to but took me off normal duties and gave me a special project which I did to the best of my ability, even though I was the last one to arrive at the pub for my own leaving party.

I have never been asked to help transfer anything to a successor.
The most I have been asked to do is make sure everything on my laptop was organised onto the company mainframe for future reference but I have never seen any sign that anyone ever used it.

But who ever said management or HR were smart?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[rconnor]

If you plan to prevent staff turnover, you are doomed to be caught with your pants down sooner or later. You must plan for contingency in the event of staff turnover. Change is the only constant.

I work for a company that does an excellent job of staff retention. They offer great benefits, tons of training opportunities, flexible work hours and competitive pay and the result is that most people stay for their entire career.

However, I think this may be the company's biggest issue because you have a person that has worked there for 35 years, and nowhere else, teaching someone that will work there for 35 years, and nowhere else. You begin to develop an inbreeding of knowledge and it becomes incredible difficult to change the way of thinking. It is a great company that has a lot of very experienced people, but sometimes it suffers from a lack of fresh ideas and perspectives.

Best bet is to treat your employees well; they will reciprocate. All the while, plan for, and appreciate the benefits of, change.

 

[patprimmer]

If you are a small business and you have a very valuable employee, help to train them to even more value and retain them by offering some shares.

If you do not train, you never get competent people even short term. If you do train and they leave, at least you had competent people for some time. If you do train and manage to retain them, you have won twice.

If you are holding them back, try to place them with a customer or prospect. That way you get a loyal friend at the customers.

Regards
Pat
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[jmw]

One reason the best applicants were attracted to Schlumberger was that good employees were taken up to their limits... if found.
They fast tracked good candidates into good positions. Not brown nosers, good candidates.... (this is the company where I once had a good manager who was fast tracked out of there).
If they went on to better things in Schlum or with other companies it was all the same.
I also worked at companies where they not only had a problem keeping employees they had a problem finding good candidates to begin with because it was recognised that no one good ever came from that company.

So if you do take new employees in one year and turn them out several years later as above average, you should find good applicants come your way and you get a better return on your investment than if you have to invest the same or more effort on poor employees you then can't get rid of.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com