Retaining Employee: With Love or Money?

Everyone is born with their own traits, their own behaviour that distincts them from one another. However, some people are not their behaviour. They may act differently than who they really are, they do not show their true colours. When someone’s attitude is not favourable to us, sometimes the best way to tackle this is by accepting who they are first, then slowly taking steps to influence them to change. In reality, this is easier said than done. Of course anyone could be changed from bad to good, but the issue is will this change last in the long run? Will it be permanent? Could these behavioural changes move in the direction you deem to be for the better? This would be a huge challenge to you, especially when you are a boss attempting to change your people. You need to do this so that you could retain your people as long as possible. What should you offer to motivate them towards behavioural change? Is money the answer to everything?

When you are unable to retain your people, you jeopardise both your time and money. Why is this so? The reason is simple. When any of your people leaves, you need more time to start finding for the right replacement and this at the same time, would incur costs. Can you overcome this? Have you ever considered giving your people time to change or you would rather just let them go and hire new ones? If you want to give them time, how long should it be? It all depends on perspective. Some bosses opt to give their people the chance to change, but if this goes on and on and on, you still make losses in terms of time and money. This is bad for your business, especially when you are dealing with older staff who are reluctant to change accordingly, making you deviate further from your business goals. So, why lose so much when you can skip the hassle and just hire younger talents that are able to perform better?

Despite this negative performance from his people, Paul did not resort towards firing them. Paul is soft-hearted and he loves his employees dearly, especially those who were his relatives. Paul was unable to let them go, but it was threatening his business too much! He was struggling to decide on how he should handle them as they were willing but lack capabilities in producing results. He tried hiring new younger and more capable people to assist in his business, but this too, was unsatisfactory. More conflicts and internal politics in his business arise instead.

Among these three, time is the most difficult to attain or maintain. Unlike money and knowledge, there is no way you could replenish time. What’s lost has been lost because time and tide wait for no man. Therefore, in relation to making decisions on retaining your people, you have to consider time. Always keep an eye on time, HR expert will recommend FIRE fast HIRE slow.

In making a decision whether to retain a person in your business, you could always depend on performance-based indicators by setting them objectives for them to follow, and then reward them for successful achievements. If they are unable to follow and they are not motivated by money, you may start considering giving them a warning letter, or just simply remove them from your business.

If the answers to the above questions proves that they are ecological, it is relevant to RETAIN them in your business. What if this does not help you in making your decision too? You can resort to your final option, that is a coaching process called Taking Detailed Personal History.

Now, another common issue is when a person has too many clouds in them. Just too many where you cannot decide what exact method should be utilised to tackle the problem! In this case, my advice is that you should only use one coaching method. A suitable one would be Timeline Therapy (TLT). When you start tackling one cloud, unconsciously, you are also able to tackle other clouds as well in the process.