Part 1 of a 2 part series (Click here for Part 2)

A retention toolkit for innovators.

Corporate executives are beginning to learn the high value of Innovators, which can be 5 to 300 times the value of an average employee. If a company doesn’t have enough innovators, a primary option is recruiting them. In a previous related article, I highlighted how you can successfully hire innovators.

But that knowledge alone isn’t sufficient because you have to constantly work to retain these individuals that are constantly being targeted by recruiters from other firms. It should be obvious that if your firm successfully recruited them away from their existing employer, there is a high probability that another employer could do the same thing again and recruit them away from you.

Unfortunately, 95% of all retention approaches can best be described as marginally effective for the average employee, which makes them useless when you’re trying to retain an individual innovator that doesn’t have the same needs and expectations of the average employee. Therefore, if you want to keep the best innovators you need to realize that it is essential to provide your managers with a toolkit of bold, aggressive and data-driven retention approaches that are tailored specifically to your innovators. I should also note that many of the practices that work to retain innovators are also effective in increasing their productivity.

In this two-part article, I will highlight the most effective retention practices that are specifically targeted toward retaining innovators, game changers and top performers. After over 20 years of retention research and practice, I can also assure you that each one of these 30+ tools is effective. Read More »