8 Top Trends in Talent Retention

By Kevin Casey

**Editor’s Note: Throughout the fourth quarter of 2018, as part of our “In Focus” series, we will feature a series of galleries designed to help partners grow their businesses in 2019 and beyond.**

There’s an old sales truism that goes something like this: In most businesses, it’s always more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.

The same principle almost invariably applies when it comes to employees: It’s more expensive to hire new people than it is to retain the good people you already have.

The difference lies in how you calculate those costs. In the sales context, it often literally comes down to dollars and cents: It will literally cost the company more money to acquire a new client than it will to keep an existing customer happy — and, as a result, loyal.

When it comes to people, the costs could also be direct — a replacement hire might demand a greater compensation package than the previous person, for example. But where it really gets expensive is in terms of indirect costs: disruptions to productivity or projects, lost organizational IQ and skills, hits to morale and team chemistry, customer-relationship concerns and so forth. If your company’s hiring and retention plan looks like a revolving door, all of these issues and more will inevitably crop up. And while they might not be direct financial costs, they will eventually harm the top and bottom lines.

This is a particularly fraught issue in the channel world, where partners are competing for technical talent (as well as sales, marketing and other functions) with a vast range of employers and industries, including much larger companies with bigger bankrolls.

Digital Guardian’s Tim Bandos

So when you do bring good people on board in any role – and perhaps especially in technology positions – it pays to keep them around.

Speaking of paying: Yeah, money matters to people. If you’re not willing to pay properly, it’s going to be tougher to both hire and keep people. But direct compensation is not the only thing that matters.

“Clearly, pay is always a huge motivator, but beyond that, I really think applicants are looking for an experience where they’ll grow and learn in their career,” says Tim Bandos, VP of cybersecurity at Digital Guardian.

This is especially true in a rapidly evolving technology landscape. If you bemoan a lack of available talent with cloud-computing skills, for example, but you’re unwilling to invest in those skills in your own workforce — well, let’s just say there’s a gap in your thinking. The same holds true for any other in-demand or emerging tech, too.

AWS’ Maureen Lonergan

“One of the most effective ways an organization can build and retain this necessary talent is by educating and leveraging existing staff,” says Maureen Lonergan, director, worldwide training and certification at AWS. “In a competitive job market, it’s even more important for organizations to invest in employees in order to retain top talent. Investing in your people is a win-win solution.”

In the gallery below, we’ll identify eight growing trends and best practices for doing that and more. These are the increasingly important areas that partners should be considering and implementing as the competition for talent grows more and more fierce. Your best people aren’t going to stick around simply because they lack better options, so you need to ensure that your company is the better option.