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Retaining Talent

Read an article the other day (somewhere) that the war for talent is hotting up (again?). It makes sense in Australia where unemployment is just on 4% - a 30-year low.

Being a newly minted entrepreneur – in Aus at least – I wonder about that. How and where will I find good people? People who will care as much as I do about my customers? I care because I know very personally that they are the people who allow me to eat and look after my family. Can any employee care as much? As soon as you are an employee, the person who feeds you is the boss – one step removed from the customer, and employees will always act accordingly: please the boss before the customer – that is only human.

Even when I consider myself as an (ex-) employee, I must be honest and say… ‘I guess not!’ As much as I considered myself to be a valuable employee (no comments required on this one, thanks) I still did not care as much as I care now. And it is only when you are the owner of your own business that you get that first hand experience of what customer service is all about.

So, my contrarian advice to large companies who are struggling to hang on to talent is this: FIRE THEM!

That’s right: let them go out there and stretch their legs and start a business that is funded by the corporate and let them build a business where they are the top dog. If they are truly talented, the corporation would soon have a pretty nice investment/ subsidiary. If not, they weren’t that talented anyway. (And you can hire them back with a good dose of humility and gratitude.)

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