RETENTION BONUSES A WAY TO KEEP SKILLS

This is the post that should have been done on Wednesday. For some reason or another I could not get into the blog - must have been the Gremlins at work again!

Retaining talent is something that seems to be on the lips of most business people today. It is a problem that all of us need to deal with on some level or another. Firstly finding the right person is becoming quite a challenge and then once you've found them to keep them is also becoming something of a real challenge. It is not limited to the upper end of the market either.

I have client's who are battling to find reliable sales staff! Logic tells me that there should be an abundance of sales staff as it is the one career where you are not obliged to have any kind of qualificaion and yet - yet there do not seem to be any, worth their salt, around.

Rachel Van Doorene's, Conversations that Matter, is currently having a look at this problem and she is getting people from all walks of life to brainstorm and see if they can find a solution to this problem. To find out more, have a look at Rachel's website on www.womeninc.co.za.

Retention bonuses a way to keep skills
Staff Reporter24 January 2007 at 11h00

With a shortage of job skills in the country and competition for top BEE executives sometimes fierce, some corporates are turning to the retention bonus as a way of hanging on to their best people. This bonus, if pitched at the right level, can be a very effective weapon in a human resource department's arsenal, said Debbie Goodman-Bhyat, managing director of Jack Hammer Executive Headhunters. "For example," said Goodman-Bhyat, "professional services group KPMG recently implemented a staff bonus scheme in an effort to retain scarce skills as demands for financial acumen has seen audit firms losing higher numbers of graduates to other sectors of the economy. "Retention bonuses are most commonly structured around situations where a company is closing down or being taken over, and needs to retain key staff to see it through the handover or close-up process. "Alternatively these bonuses are awarded to manage business risk when companies are finalising massive projects and can't afford to lose key players."

Goodman-Bhyat said that if pitched at the right level in relation to the current level of the employee's salary and position within an organisation, these bonuses were usually a very effective tool. "An individual is going to be reluctant to accept a new job knowing that there is a guaranteed, juicy reward waiting for them if they stay on for a specified period," she said. Goodman-Bhyat said companies wanting to woo individuals would usually need to compensate them for the retention bonuses they would be missing out on if they decided to take up their offer. This could be a costly exercise, and often acted as the deterrent it was intended to be. In spite of the skills shortage, companies are not eager to pay out hefty sums of money to new employees who have yet to prove themselves in a new work environment .She said for the retention bonus to be effective, though, the value needed to be weighty enough to secure the "loyalty of the employee for the ... desired period".