Four Ways To Retain your Best People

There is no doubt that the world of work and the way people are attracted to and retained in work is very different to how it used to be.

What was interesting in the report was the four ways they highlighted to retain your best people:

Paving strong career paths & highlighting advancement opportunities

Money & value

Recognising professional accomplishments – both big and small

Creating an inspiring culture that invests in long term relationships

These four ways are key drivers in keeping people engaged.

Paving strong career paths & highlighting achievement opportunities

One thing that I have noticed is that career paths are no longer vertical – they used to be but now are more like road maps. Not everyone wants to strive to the top and certainly less so, as it seems, to be partners. It is more like a road map where there are lots of destinations and different experiences along the way and at each destination. It is more collaborative by nature in the journey along a personalised road map. Everyone’s road map is different, however, what is needed is ‘clear expectations’ and ‘visibility’ into opportunities that help advance a career or develop new skills. Talk about careers and road maps often with your people. Look to your current team to open up new opportunities and invest in training your people in critical new skills.

Money & Value

While it would be foolish to say that money doesn’t matter, it does. What is interesting about this market from a recruiter’s perspective is that we are not getting candidates looking to move just for money or to increase their salary. By and large, it would seem that compensation is about right in the market for most candidates. What is increasingly becoming more sought after is time. The lifestyle benefits of part-time, flexible hours, 9 day fortnights and working remotely from home are seen as more desirable benefits. Time has become more valuable than money. So, a combination of a competitive salary and ‘stay worthy’ benefits such as flexibility are an ideal approach.

Recognise professional accomplishments

A ‘thank you’ goes along way. Recognise and celebrate accomplishments, big or small.

Choose the right approach as every one is different. Some like the limelight and the attention so make it public and others like a quiet more personal approach. A thank you note or an email at times is right. Other times a gift or voucher for a dinner for two is appreciated. When did you last show a sign of appreciation? Can’t remember, then it must be time!

Create an inspiring culture

The ‘Alliance’ by Hoffman, Casnochs and Yeh highlights a major shift in the world of work. Jobs were once jobs for life but not now.

”The employer-employee relationship is broken, and managers face a seemingly impossible dilemma: the old model of guaranteed long-term employment no longer works in a business environment defined by continuous change, but neither does a system in which every employee acts like a free agent. The solution? Stop thinking of employees as either family or as free agents. Think of them instead as allies.

As a manager you want your employees to help transform the company for the future. And your employees want the company to help transform their careers for the long term. But this win-win scenario will happen only if both sides trust each other enough to commit to mutual investment and mutual benefit. Sadly, trust in the business world is hovering at an all-time low.” (Book Depository summary excerpt)

The sands are shifting on a frequent basis so how do you engender loyalty and commitment in your people so they want to stay? The work needs to be mutually beneficial to you the business owner, and to the people you employ. Your people need a mission or individual missions that are mutually beneficial to both of you and can be achieved in a specific or realistic period of time. Its collaborative – that word again!

A strong road map, the right money, lifestyle benefits, recognition and a collaborative culture that is mutually beneficial is going to get you much further down the path towards a happy and stable team. I think we have a lot of those teams in law firms, which is why it is so hard to attract talent as they are happily engaged elsewhere with the right mix. I would be interested in your thoughts if you have found other ways to retain your best people or the reason why you have stayed in a position for the time that you have.

Written by Judith Eller.

Filed under Blog

February 22, 2021

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Is your workplace changing you?

By Sarah Bartlett • September 9, 2026

Does your workplace change you? This was written (full disclosure by another consultant) a while ago but I feel is still relevant now, what do you think? I was watching the movie Fury, a very good yet very disturbing film set at the end of the Second World War. The main character, Norman, is a reluctant young soldier trained as a typist but forced to become the assistant driver/gunner in the tank "Fury" after the death of the previous gunner. Initially, he refuses to shoot the enemy, but he is forced by his Sergeant, "Wardaddy" (played by Brad Pitt), to shoot a Nazi in the back as he kneels begging for his life. As the movie progresses, he realises he has to kill in order to stay alive and save the lives of his crew, and begins to relish killing Nazis. I was fascinated by the transformation from Norman to "Machine," his nickname from the crew. He had to change, and change fast, in order to survive. The typist who refused to fire his weapon became a ruthless, efficient killing machine. What disturbed me more was the thought that this transformation could happen to any of us in the same horrific situation. Many of those who fought would have been considered ordinary men, not trained killers, before they joined the army. To survive in war, soldiers must be prepared to kill the enemy, and to do that, you have to dehumanise them, view them as lesser people. An interesting counterpoint comes at the end of the movie, when Norman is hiding under the tank and is found by an SS soldier (the worst of the Nazis, according to Wardaddy). Instead of dragging him out and shooting him, or worse, torturing him, as he'd been told would happen, the soldier leaves him alone. The movie ends with Norman being rescued and labelled a hero. It's easy to see how war could change someone dramatically, but how much do other changes in our environment change us? We all know people in relationships who have changed, for better or worse, when they started a relationship with someone new. Sometimes change is necessary to make a relationship work, compromise is essential, you have to think of someone else, not just yourself. Other times, one or both people are forced to change, and not for the better. One test of a good relationship: do you make each other better people? It's a bit of a stretch to compare work to war, but there's no doubt in my mind that your workplace can change you. At the extreme end, some people become depressed, overwhelmed, or burnt out by their work, whereas others grow, thrive and become better people. Sometimes it's just called the culture of the organisation, you either fit, or you don't. Those who don't "make it" weren't cut out for the environment, or didn't have the right attributes to succeed. If you don't think your workplace changes people, take a look at the senior people in your organisation, especially those who've been there a long time. Are there similarities in values, working style, management approach, communication? Is that self-selection, recruiting people who are all similar or is the organisation moulding people to fit, or some combination of all three? Do you find yourself wrestling with your conscience, bursting with the need to disagree, challenge or object, but suppressing it because you know you'd be swimming against the tide? Are you justifying decisions to yourself that you'd previously have called just wrong? Do you feel the need to comply with the company line? It might not be an ethical dilemma, it could simply be that you feel you need to suppress who you really are to fit in. You might manage that for a while, but eventually, it becomes suffocating. If you find yourself in this situation, you have three options: Adapt, change and compromise - just like Norman did in Fury. Stay and swim against the stream , becoming an internal agent of change. (In my experience, unless leadership is also swimming against the current with you and genuinely trying to change the culture, this is futile.) Get out and find a place where you can be yourself, thrive and excel. There are plenty of workplaces that don't make better people, some even do real damage in the pursuit of winning. But there are others that make people better, not worse. If you need help getting out of an environment that's changing you, and not for the better, get in touch, let's talk about your options.