Retaining Creatives

You invest a lot in your employees. You spend money recruiting them, then you integrate them into your business which takes time and often money. There's a sunk cost associated with hiring new employees, and it's helpful to avoid sinking it again.

So, once you've got 'em, how do you keep 'em?

Well, you need to find out what they want. What's important to your Creatives? And once you figure that out, you need to decide if it's something you an offer.

A lot of people are looking to grow in their jobs. Figuring out how to do that in a creative field can be tricky. Bureaucracies often have defined career paths...on a recent episode of American Dad, Stan was thrilled to have moved an eighth of an inch up the CIA's organizational chart. But Creatives tend to have more individualized goals that can't be as easily defined and don't always fit a pattern. That reinforces the need for you to understand not only their skills but also the changes they've gone through -- remember, the person you're retaining isn't the same person you recruited.

Among the popular retention tools are training and education. From the employees' perspective this helps them develop their skills and become more marketable, which doesn't mean they're necessarily going to leave, but it's always nice to have options. This points to a problem, though: you offer development opportunities, they take them, and then they leave. Consider some sort of contract that requires them to stay with the company for a minimum time in exchange for classes. You may not be able to afford to put people through degree programs, but consider individual courses or certification programs.

A lot of people are looking for advancement to convince them to stay. For some, this means moving into new positions with more responsibility and opportunities for leadership. For others, in means the chance to expand into different fields...maybe your interior designer wants to shift from residences to corporate offices. Sometimes advancement can be horizontal rather than vertical. Once again, this requires you to actually talk to people to figure what's important to them, since there's no one-size-fits-all concept of progression.

The old standby, of course, is improving compensation and benefits. This seems like a no-brainer. But remember, by doing this, you're setting new expectations. If you're offering some kind of one-time bonus you need to make sure they understand it's one-time, or they'll be expecting it again. Likewise, be careful that other employees don't get the idea that they're automatically getting the same thing as soon as they have enough time under their belts, because a broken promise (even if only one person thought there was a promise) can lead someone to quit. Permanent changes are probably best. So consider raises and increased vacation time. One thing, though: avoid using flex-time as a retention perk. Flex-time isn't a benefit, it's a way of doing business, but too many people wave that around as an enticement to stay.

Don't get wrapped up in the idea that you have to retain everyone. Some people you don't mind losing, so don't offer them inducements to stay. Unless you've made some contractual obligation, you don't have to offer raises and other benefits to people unless you want to. When you create programs designed to retain employees, make sure you tailor them so you only keep the ones you really want.