Recently I've read an article on how to keep employees away from head hunters. Among the advice dedicated to protection of personnel from attempts to tempt them away there were such ones as prohibition of public appearances, wiretapping at their work stations and monitoring of their social media activity. So I thought, are those measures applicable in realms where the employees produce intellectual capital?
I've been working in services for more than 10 years. It is one of the most complicated realms in terms of promotion, which is related to the fact that we actually sell air. Our goods are beyond touching, and physical assessment of its quality seems impossible. The only efficient way of promotion of services is to demonstrate experience and knowledge of the realm where a company is incorporated. Thus, the employees become the essential marketing tool. The higher expertise level they show, the higher level of trust the potential customers feel.
On the market, such companies have to face severe competition for human resources. Seemingly, a conflict of interest is in play. On the one hand you cannot withhold all your employees from highlights, while on the other hand any employee hitting the headlines or present at a conference's presidium instantly draws attention of the competitors' HR departments. What do we do?
Let's start with listing typical 'bad advice' as provided in articles concerning prevention of head hunting. I will prove they won't work in our realm.
«Keeping employees away from conferences and newspapers" you hit your sales rate. Authorization of all comments and articles by the company's stakeholder is also quite dangerous. The risk is that the persona's halo may obscure that of the brand. What will the company do when that specialist quits? What if that person starts his or her own enterprise? This situation is especially perilous in services or hi-tech realm where the essential capital lies not in material assets but in experience and intelligence of employees, as well as in the brand. Be careful: PR specialist's work shall be aimed at reinforcement of the company's brand, but not of particular persons.
And how are you going to keep a talented worker away from conferences? What about advancement of skills? Moreover, experience exchange with colleagues, as related to developing realms, is actually the only way to be in touch with any novelties.
The other advice is to 'limit the employees' social media activity'. If you deal with personnel whose essential work tool is a computer, you'd hardly succeed in those restrictions. Moreover, by prohibiting usage of the company in their profiles you narrow your company's capability of being promoted in those very social media.
And you should forget about highlighting the fact that the company monitors its employees' social media activity. Indeed, nowadays many companies trace their mentioning in media and on the web (forums, feedback sites, LiveJournal). This activity shall not by any means violate the employees' personal space, at least until they aggrieve the company by their entries.
«Inform everyone that the employees' phones are wiretapped". It's a bluff. As you probably know, wiretapping without a relevant judicial sanction is a criminal offense.
«Introduce a provision in a work contract that prohibits an employee to work for a competitive company for some time after quitting". This requirement is null and void, and most of your employees are perfectly aware of that.
The main disadvantage of all those recommendations is that they destroy trust between an employer and an employee, and they undermine the company's corporate culture.
Competitors and head hunters are potentially interested in rare specialists, experts, project managers and researchers: among them there may be average 'star' employees, middle-ranking executives, and top managers. Those people make their bread from intellectual work and usually don't consider their wages' amount the main and only motivating factor. They'd rather appreciate interesting challenges, new knowledge, and the team with which they work. They are smart and know their worth, they have high level of self-esteem. At best, they will laugh to scorn any attempts to 'keep them away'.
They don't cling to their position and opportunity to work at a particular enterprise. They realize that they're in demand on the market. If anything goes wrong in the company's corporate culture they may evacuate themselves very fast. I may say even more: they are well paid, so they may afford leaving for nothing.
Having told what is not to be done in order to keep the employees, I unfortunately cannot provide equally unambiguous recommendations on what is to be done. The only thing I can recommend for any case is to establish trustful and respectful air for a team. Intellectuals appreciate it much higher than any other career offers.
Vedomosti, No. 98 (3602)
