Love 'em or Lose 'em: Getting Good People to Stay

Fantastic read and practical tips to implement immediately

As a manager of a 40-person team, I found this to be a good book - full of good ideas on retaining employees. The only fault is that it's very self-referential ("Best way to train a manager? Buy them this book!")

Based on focus group research, the authors provide extensive guidelines for managers to retain employees. The authors present 26 specific actions managers can take, using a chapter to discuss each one. Each chapter contains a 'to do' list, brief illustrative stories, examples of retention work done by the authors' for clients, excerpts from an exit interview, as well as some linkages between chapters.The book down-plays the role of money. This is okay to the extent that too many firms think money is the 'be all and end all' of retention. Money is not, but the danger is that too many firms lull themselves into thinking that since money is not the number one factor driving turnover according to surveys, they can cut corners with compensation ( often, however, with the exception of pay packages at executive levels-consider the implicit contradiction in that). Long-term, firms that pay below competitive rates reap what they sow...marginal organizational performance. In our consulting experience we find reward systems and retention are powerfully linked. The role of compensation can work in strange and mysterious ways-and sometimes not so mysterious. People are complex.We wished that the authors gave a bit more attention to the economics of retaining people. They do make the point of paying fairly and competitively in chapter18, but the message is muted. But since this book is addressed to managers, and most managers have little-to-no meaningful influence on compensation decision-making (despite all the empowerment talk), the treatment of pay is understandable.This is a super book that focuses on the many highly important non-cash elements of retaining people. In doing so, it succeeds admirably. In short, this is a neatly organized, clearly written, how-to book. By way of recommendation, we will use it as a resource in our own organization/management development consulting work. This book should be read by anyone who manages people. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, Co-Founding Partner, Stern & Associates, Editor of Stern's Management Review, Stern's SourceFinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Information and Resources, and Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder.

Star Bright, Star FlightWhat more is there to say about retention? The facts are as familiar as they are stark. Barring a sudden financial cataclysm, the U.S. is rapidly approaching an era of full employment, likely to last through much of the next decade. At the same time, a drop in the birth rate a generation ago means there are fewer workers to go around; indeed, the pool of available 35- to 44-year-olds - the people usually selected for middle-manager and emerging-leader jobs - will plummet by 15 percent between now and the year 2015. Unswerving company loyalty, whether motivated by fealty or fear, has evaporated in the pressure cooker of 1980s downsizing and 1990s employee expectations. Whatever you call the competition for talent - war, race, prizefight, gymkhana - there's little question that good people will grow increasingly scarce and harder to keep as the next century takes hold.Amid all the retention studies and doom-and-gloom prophecies, managers should remember three crucial dicta.- It's not the money.- It could be your fault.- You can do something about it.For many employers these assertions will be lost in a flurry of knee-jerk denials: they don't apply to my company; my employees are as loyal as St. Bernards; I'm perfect, so it's not my problem; it's the economy, stupid. But for those employers who keep their blinders off and their minds open, there's now an outstanding resource and vade mecum. Love 'Em or Lose 'Em is insightful, straightforward, clever, charming, everything you'd want in a companion. Kaye and Jordan-Evans have created a combination between a reference work and a course participant guide, and like a good training course, it's designed to maximize impact through multiple formats. The book is chock-a-block with case studies, to-do ideas, quotations from managers and employees, quizzes, and fictionalized examples. It even features "Alas stories," brief tales of what went wrong to make an employee leave. (There's a certain guilty pleasure in thumbing through to these first.)"Make an employee leave" is the key phrase here. Although there are some people who are peripatetic or impossible to satisfy, Kaye and Jordan-Evans contend that most employees leave either because no one tried to keep them or because something or someone in the company made it too unpleasant to stay. Happy employees - those who have found opportunities, career growth, teamwork, enrichment, kicks, and more - don't jump ship even when someone waves a larger paycheck under their noses. And by taking inspiration from this book, managers can be sure they provide precisely the attractions their employees need to stay and succeed.For readers accustomed to grave and earnest tomes, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em will seem too informal, too friendly, too approachable. And it's true that there are occasional recommendations that seem silly, repetitive, or a tad self-promotional. But for the most part the book is a genuine pleasure to read. What more is there to say about retention? Turn to Kaye and Jordan-Evans and find out.

Very good book