Business & Executive

Ten Ways to Keep Your Star Employees

By Joel Garfinkle | Jan 16, 2023
Joel Garfinkle | ACHNET

10 Ways to Keep and Motivate Your Star Employees

1. Empower Your Star Employees to Shine By Helping Them Own Their Gifts at Work.

  • As you interact with employees, see everyone as unique and gifted, especially the star employees. Your role as a good boss with outstanding leadership qualities is to find the innate gifts within each one of your fellow employees as you interact with them.
  • Work with your employees to identify their top two gifts and help them bring those gifts to the projects they are currently working on. A sample list of possible innate gifts includes: Creativity, Facilitating, Listening, Intelligence, Intuiting, Writing, Leading, Researching, Teaching, Developing, Strategizing, Motivating, or Evaluating.
  • 2. Identify Exactly What Tasks or Responsibilities Bring Your Top Star Employees Career Fulfillment.

  • Have a meeting with your employees to identify the three aspects of their work they find most fulfilling. You want to understand not only what tasks, but which elements of the tasks and responsibilities, are most satisfying. Next, help them bring more of this type of fulfilling work into each day.
  • Spend time with your employees and help them make a list of all their daily roles, responsibilities, tasks, and activities. As they write this list, help them become aware of the following concepts that can simplify their workday: do more, do it faster, work smarter, and be more fully committed. Then eliminate as much as possible from the list until it reaches a point at which they can’t do it any faster and smarter. Good bosses need to help their employees look at their entire work life and all that it encompasses and learn to simplify. When we don’t simplify, our lives become too complicated and we become powerless.
  • 3.Encourage Your Star Employees to Focus More On What’s Right with Their Jobs and Less on What’s Wrong.

  • Highlight the accomplishments of your employees

    and help them leverage their areas of success. Not only will this improve the profile of the accomplished employee in the company and potentially lead to a promotion

    or a raise, but it will promote a positive view of themselves and their capabilities.
  • Have a meeting with every employee to discuss and review what is going right on the job. By not always focusing on what is wrong with their work and seeing it as a challenge, employees can focus on and appreciate the many opportunities present for making their jobs work for them.
  • 4. Communicate Effectively for Great Relationships at Work.

  • Guide your employees to accept the coworkers who challenge them , helping them look for the positive instead of the negative in those people. They can learn to step back, detach from their own agenda and viewpoint, and look at the challenging coworker with new eyes. This new viewpoint can occur when an employee tries to truly understand the coworker, what she thinks and feels, and why she behaves as she does. After stepping into another’s shoes and viewing things from her perspective, the question becomes, “How can I accept this individual’s imperfections and shortcomings as well as her strengths and talents?”
  • Encourage managers and supervisors to be more accessible to their employees, especially the stars, so they can better ascertain their primary needs. By being more accessible, your employees will feel that you genuinely care about them. They will feel listened to. This open communication allows employees to feel comfortable sharing what is on their mind. By responding to employee needs immediately and directly before they become real issues, you will eliminate the danger that they will need to find another workplace to get those needs met.
  • 5. Improve Your Employees’ Morale by Showing Them How to Work Smarter Instead of Harder.

  • Spend time with your employees and help them make a list of all their daily roles, responsibilities, tasks, and activities. As they write this list, help them become aware of the following concepts that can simplify their workday: do more, do it faster, work smarter, and be more fully committed. Then eliminate as much as possible from the list until it reaches a point at which they can’t do it any faster and smarter. Good bosses need to help their employees look at their entire work life and all that it encompasses and learn to simplify. When we don’t simplify, our lives become too complicated and we become powerless.
  • Help your employees prioritize their most important activities. Ask them to write down the most important tasks they must complete. Next, have them number them in order of priority. If employees need help finding the most important tasks, have them ask the following questions: If I could complete one activity/task today, what would it be? Is this activity the best use of my time, knowledge, creativity, and experience? Have them focus on the most important task until it is
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