Will Your Best Employees Be Willing to Wait for a Promotion?

Top Performers Expect More from Employers

A high performing employee can deliver up to four times more productivity at work than an average performer. It’s the old 80-20 rule:  20% of your employees perform about 80% of the work in your organization.Retaining these rock star employees is a vital mission for Human Resources. They are dependable. They enjoy their work. They are very difficult to replace.The average corporate budget for salary increases is just 3% for the fourth year in a row. Compensation is a critical part of job satisfaction—especially for high performing employees. That’s why employers are planning to give top performing employees 77% higher pay increases than other employees in 2017.

Millennials Are Prepared to Job Hop

Millennials are notoriously demanding when it comes to salary and promotion expectations. Gallup discovered that 60% of Millennials are open to new job opportunities. And 21% had changed jobs in the last year. That’s three times more attrition than other generations of employees.Because they comprise the largest generation of workers, it’s important to understand what Millennials want and how to retain the best and brightest of this rising generation. When asked by Gallup what they wanted at work, they cited opportunities to learn, quality managers, and opportunities for advancement.Of course, this doesn’t mean that salary isn’t important to Millennials. In spite of the job hopper label, Millennials have learned that staying employed at the same company for over two years on average can earn 50% less income over a lifetime.

5 Tips to Retain Top Performers

1. Carefully review salaries within roles and teams. Top performers should not receive lower pay than lower performing team members in the same roles. If they find out about it, it’s a recipe for sudden and severe dissatisfaction. If you find this is the case with some of your top performers, work with their managers about how to remedy the situation.
2. Advance top performers into new jobs. A great way to retain high performing employees is to promote them. Roles with greater responsibility usually provide a higher salary, too. HR professionals should always have a succession plan for retaining top performers and moving them into higher roles when openings become available.
3. Pay for performance. If your total budget for pay raises is around 3%, you have to concentrate your resources toward rewarding high performance. That means low performers may not receive any increase or a very small one. That’s ok. If a mediocre worker leaves the organization over salary disappointment, it won’t have nearly the same impact as if you lose a star employee.
4. Recognize top performers. It feels nice to be recognized for hard work. When your employees make a difference, let everyone know. Top performers make a great example for other employees, and sometimes, a bit of recognition can help soothe anxiety over not-so-fat bonuses. This strategy won’t retain your top people if you aren’t keeping up with industry norms for salaries, but it can definitely help them stay more engaged and satisfied with the company.
5. Emphasize the value of the total compensation package. Part of the reason salary increases have hovered at 3% is that employer benefits costs have risen 24% since 2001, according to Willis Towers Watson. Employees need to understand the total value of their compensation package, including benefits. That may help them view salary expectations more holistically.

Stay on Top of Performance and Rewards

HR professionals can use technology to perform the above suggestions with greater ease and efficiency than ever before. Asure Software’s Human Capital Management and Talent Management solutions give you the data to perform payroll analysis, calculate the value of benefits, create succession plans, and design challenging performance goals for high performers.