How to Retain Great Talent

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Retaining great talent in this competative times is a challenging task. It is very important for team productivity, efficeinct, company growth and ultimately customer satisfaction.

I am sharing my perspectives as a Technology Lead and Manager and from my experience of managing diverse teams in my career.

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Let us look at the core of this issue. How does one get happy? Simple, when one’s expectations are met. I have seen that in most of the teams, the expectations are either not set or not conveyed properly to the team members. If both parties are aware of the expectations and limitations on either side, you can easily fore-see the future of an member in a team.

So as a Leader, it is important to know the expectations of the team he is handling. When you become part of a team, it will be a good idea to discuss and set expectations for the team sooner. Also you need to meet with each individual and understand his/her individual goals.

Team Expections

It depends on the individual team, but the following could be some of the goals, which may not be totally measurable, but can be set as a guide line.

1. Customer Satisfaction : Should be the #1 priority for any company. If the customer is not happy, company should sense it sooner than later.
2. Quality of Deliverable : This depends on majorly 2 factors : the Product (code) and the Process (delivery pipeline — CI/CD etc). Whether you are working on a new product or an existing one, you need to understand the current state and set the expectations correctly here.
3. Work-Life Balance : It is well respected in most of the companies and a leader can easily get a sense from the team interactions. If it is missing, in many cases, acknowleding the same and taking steps to improve the same will be a great step forward.

In all the above scenario, it will be a good idea to evaluate the baseline for ewach and set the expectation for next couple of iterations. Discuss these parameters after each iteration, as part of the retrospectives.

Individual Expectations

Here also it varies from person to person, but the following list could be typical.

1. Financial Incentives: It may not be at the top of the list, but is commonly seen at the top. It is important to know that each member is decently paid, with respect to the current market rate. If not, need to know why and set the goals to get him/her on track. The next step is to make sure that the process of appraisal happens smoothly and employees expectations are met on the same. I have seen in many companies, I have seen the data required for the same is not collected/recorded cumulatively, but created just before the appraisal time. I have seen it working much smoother, when data is collected iteratively (typically for each Sprint) where core set of parameters that matter the most for an appraisal are gauged and conveyed properly to the team member at the end of each sprint. These parameters should be less convoulted and team should agree on how each item will be measured. (For a technical team some examples are :Code Qaulity , measured through code reviews and test case reviews, Team Work, Accountability, Passion to learn etc)
2. Team Interaction: Make sure the team members are happy about each other and any issues are addressed with no delay. One typical challenge is that some of the team members have to take more resposibility and work is not distributed evenly among team members.
3. Work Satiscation : Get to know the feedback from each team member on whether the work he is doing is matching his expectations and take action accordingly.

End Goal

If expections are set properly, a leader will have better isnsight about the future of the product and team. And proper data collection will help to take actions properly and be able to justify the actions accordingly. And above all, a more transparent system will be well appreciated and valued by every one.!