When we look at performance management, we can often place the focus on those who are underperforming or display certain negative behaviours. Lots of our toolkits are centred around improving employee’s performance, which is important of course and what’s equally as important is nurturing and recognising your high achievers and the potential in ‘up and coming’ employees too.
If you’re smashing your goals, targets and putting your all into a role and don’t feel the recognition for your efforts, well, it’s the quickest way to feel demotivated for sure!
The same applies to your teams, and when you start to lose the connection and motivation of your high performers, well, it’s not rocket science to know you stand a good chance of losing them!
Here’s a few ways you can invest in developing and retaining your talent:
Recognition– If there’s one thing employees want, it’s to feel valued and appreciated. This is a simple and instant way to keep and build engagement. Meeting regularly and giving praise where it’s due, nurturing these employees in this way can create a sense of loyalty to you and your business and it makes people feel valued.
Listening – Put in regular catch ups and take the time to understand your employees’ aspirations. What drives them, what their goals are, where their skill set lies. All of this can help you to create the right development plan to support them.
Challenge – High performers are self-motivated and thrive on challenges, responsibility and delivering to that. Create opportunities where they can lead, grow and inspire others.
Respect – Whilst motivated and driven employees generally can work pretty autonomously, be aware of the workloads you’re giving them. It can be tempting to give them more and more as they deliver, but we all have limits. Burnout can come on quite quickly, and this can lead to employees feeling undervalued and unappreciated.
Nurturing your high performers can reap many benefits to your business, they come with a vast skillset and knowledge, motivation, productivity all of which can have positive impacts on the rest of your teams. It’s worth investing in solid plans to keep your top performers!
