Have you identified what your High Performers want?

We live in a competitive world. Organisations have to fight to attract talent in the face of stiff competition as well as to retain their top talent. This is more so for the IT industry in India which brings in enormous revenues for the country. While IT organisations provide employment to a large number of people, it is also true that this industry is beset by crippling attrition problems, with average attrition in the 15-20% range. Now, as everyone knows, not all attrition is bad. In fact, a certain level of churn helps in keeping the organisation refreshed with new thoughts and ideas accompanying new employees. However, as they say, there is attrition and there is attrition! Organisations tend to be less worried about low performers (LPs) leaving than they are about high performers (HPs) deciding to quit, and rightly so. Research has shown that high performers can deliver 400% more productivity than average performers. Hence, retaining HPs needs to be the primary goal for organisations.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) describes research done by employees of SAP that looks into the driving factors for HP retention. The research was conducted on a population that consisted of 40% HPs, 40% average performers and 20% LPs. Their research indicated that nearly 20% of HPs indicated that they intended to leave their current organisation within 6 months. Their study further showed that there were four main factors contributing to job satisfaction for HPs.

Basic/bonus pay: The most important contribution satisfaction for HPs was basic pay followed by bonus pay. While most companies differentiate HPs from LPs through differing raises in basic pay, the study suggests that this could lead to resentment among peers. They suggest using bonus pay to reward HPs.

Feedback: HPs are also more keen to get feedback from their managers with 50% of HPs expecting monthly performance appraisals from their managers. It is no surprise that a number of large organisations like GE, Adobe, Accenture etc., are moving away from annual performance appraisals to more frequent or even continuous appraisal proceses.

Self-directed learning: HPs show a stronger tendency to direct their own learning and to demand more avenues for formal training. The authors suggest that this could actually be one way to identify potential HPs.

Lower relocation tendencies: Surprisingly, the study found that HPs were less likely to want to relocate than LPs, a somewhat counter intuitive finding. The authors suggest that it is probably better for organisations to identify ways to give their HPs more flexibility in their current locations.

Organisations should thus start by looking at segmented metrics for attrition rather than relying on overall attrition percentages and then putting together processes than enable them to retain their best performers.

The writer is founder and CEO of HR analytics start-up, nFactorial Analytical Sciences