Keeping Highly-Rated Employees Employed©


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Articles about Employees, Managers, and the Company
Written by Dale Lee

An employee is hired to help the company make a profit





Table of Contents


Introduction (You have to start somewhere.)

List of Things a Manager Can do (Management is the key to keeping a highly-rated employee working for the company.)

Your Comment Is Wanted (Your opinion is important to Dale.)



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Introduction (You have to start somewhere.)

Finding and hiring very good employees is the ultimate goal for a boss except for his goal to become the company’s president. How should a manager treat a good employee if he wants the employee to understand that he wants the employee to be a long term employee of the company? If you have a good employee and do not adequately acknowledge him for his abilities, another company will be happy to acknowledge them by hiring him.


A good employee can get locked into a seemingly dead end position at a company, because of there are no positions he can be promoted to, he does not have the seniority to move ahead of not as talented employee, etc. The company’s organization structure and Human Resource Department rules can cause the good employees to move to another company.


Keeping the good employee a happy employee can be a challenge for a boss especially when the Human Resource Department rules can make it hard to single out the real good employees and reward them. Often Human Resource Department rules are oriented to limiting law suits by unhappy employees and poor performing employees. It is often easier for a very good employee to earn more money and gain a promotion by getting a job at another company.


The following are suggestions for managers as they lead very good employees. One of the suggestions in its self will not necessarily keep a good employee happy, but it will not hurt. The motivation of each employee will often be different. As a manager, you need to understand what motivates each of your employees.


An employee’s job is to help the company make a profit and not just perform a job’s duties. A manager’s job is to help the company make a profit.


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List of Things a Manager Can do
(Management is the key to keeping a highly-rated employee working for the company.)


Highly-rated employees are rare and should be treated as such.


Employees know which employees are doing a good job and who is not. The employees need to see management acknowledging who is doing a good job and who is not.


If a manager is good at hiring competent employees, he must realize that he has people working for him that has the ability and/or the potential to effectively handle his job.


Raising the performance bar by continually hiring good employees will box in the manager at review time when the human resource department rules kick in and will only allow him to have a limited number of his employees that can receive high ratings when more employees deserve the high ratings.


A manager that has several highly-rated employees reporting to him has as big a problem as a manager that has several poor performing employees even though the problems are different.


Ignoring a highly-rated employee is a good way to ensure another company will soon employ a highly-rated employee.


The handling of a highly-rated employee should be considered to be as delicate as handling a poorly rated employee.


A highly-rated employee should be treated different from other employees.


A highly-rated employee realizes that he is a highly-rated employee and should be treated as such.


A highly-rated employee will have the motivation that will enable him to leave the company if the company management does not appropriately recognize and appreciate him.


Piling work on the highly-rated employee because he will get the job done efficiently is not the best way to acknowledge that he is highly rated.


Managers, remember the highly-rated employee has the same number of hours to work as a poorly rated employee even though he will get more done in the same number of hours.


A highly-rated employee can become burned out by the management continually piling on the work, because he will get the work completed.


Moving work from a poor employee to a highly-rated employee is not a smart management decision even though it will in the short term get more work done.


It takes effort on management to keep a highly-rated employee once the employee is identified.


Management that allows a highly-rated employee to leave the company should be penalized for losing the employee.


Make sure the highly-rated employee is given the attention that the squeaky wheel employee demands.


The highly-rated employee should be recognized in front of other employees. The recognition can be a motivation for some employees to work harder so they can receive recognition.


Effort has to be invested to keep a highly-rated employee motivated and engaged to stay at the company just as effort has to be invested in the poorly rated employee to improve his job performance or terminate the employee.


If a manager has an employee that always does a good job, the manager needs to invest the time to keep the employee working for him.


Human Resource rules to help protect the company from law suits by poor performing employees make it difficult to demonstrate to very good employees that the company very much wants them to work for the company for a long time.


A manager that thinks he can fool or manipulate his good employees is dumber than his poorest performing employee. They catch on quickly which is why they are good employees.


A manager should realize he may have employees that are as smart as he is. To be smart, he needs to make good use of the bright employees as long as he has them reporting to him.


A poor manager can cause problems with the way that he handles problems, employees, and evaluations.


A poor manager can cause the company to lose quality employees.


Treating employees according to their manager’s personal relationship with them instead of how they perform their duties will cause problems.


Why does a company allow a poor manager to continue in his position?


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Your Comment Is Wanted (Your opinion is important to Dale.)

If you have a question or comment about the content of this article written by Dale Lee, notify Dale. When you send an e-mail, be sure to include the article in question's title, your name, and your comments/questions. Dale is interested in hearing from you.

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August 6, 2005