The lay offs, pay cuts and chang­ing job mar­ket last year will have a big effect on this year and the years that fol­low. There is likely to be a migra­tion of the work­force that will rival the migra­tions of the blue wilde­beest in East Africa. The wilde­beest are seek­ing some thing new and so are employ­ees. For many, the idea of loy­alty has been revealed as a one way street.

More and more work­ers will look for bet­ter sit­u­a­tions. Some will go to other com­pa­nies. Some will start their own busi­nesses and some will become con­tract employ­ees that float from project oo project with lit­tle to no attach­ment to any one com­pany. Find­ing and keep­ing good peo­ple will be like hunt­ing for nee­dles in a hay stack. Not only will the very act of find­ing the right peo­ple be dif­fi­cult the hunt will cost pre­cious resources that could have been spent on push­ing the com­pany forward.

How do you find and keep good employees?

Here is a list that will help:

1. Get rid of dead wood (good per­form­ers don’t like to be around losers).
2. Pay peo­ple for per­for­mance (whether it’s through com­mis­sions or another form peo­ple need to feel that their effort directly relates to their rewards).
3. Real­ize and act like peo­ple are more than tires. You shouldn’t use them until they are worn down and then get new ones!
4. Make sure that peo­ple are in the right jobs, as much as pos­si­ble (the more they can uti­lize their tal­ents the more ful­filled they will be).
5. Com­mu­ni­cate about what is going on. Treat­ing peo­ple like mush­room won’t work. You should test your per­cep­tion of how well you have com­mu­ni­cated. If they don’t “get it” you haven’t done your job.
6. Stick with your plan. Don’t give your team whiplash by chang­ing your approach every 90 days. It’s good to make mid course cor­rec­tions but swap­ping horses mid­stream get s old in a hurry.

Far too many reduc­tions in work­force or other cut backs are a result of exec­u­tive mis­takes not employee failings.

Any­one can blame it one the econ­omy but too many com­pa­nies have done well in the last 12 months for work­ers to just accept the cut back and not go look­ing for greener grass some where else. Tak­ing the steps to keep and develop your peo­ple will pay off in more ways than you can imagine.

Last week I had the honor of attend­ing an Alan Weiss work­shop on the Best Prac­tices in Con­sult­ing. Alan’s work shop was by far the best learn­ing expe­ri­ence that I have engaged in my career. The lessons learned were spot on and prag­matic. Besides this, Alan runs a great work­shop. Not only did I gain value but my clients will greatly ben­e­fit from the mod­els and processes that Alan trans­ferred to us. On top of all that the other atten­dees were inspir­ing pro­fes­sion­als from the around the world. The net­work­ing was fab­u­lous! I’ve said it before, invest­ing in Alan’s pro­grams is the best thing I’ve done for my busi­ness as a consultant.