By Jim Wong, CPA | October 1, 2014

Engage your employees and encourage them to stay.

Like any good, healthy, relationship, you have to nurture it, build trust in it, and grow it — in order to maintain long-term happiness. These fundamentals extend passed that of personal relationships. They hold true for professional connections between companies and their employees just the same.

So, when you have talented, knowledgeable and high-producing accounting, finance or IT professionals, for instance, it’s important to have a handle on what exactly will spark their loyalty and make it an easy decision for them to stay with your company for the longevity of their careers.

The first step is hiring people who fit the role today. Their career goals must align with the company’s opportunities and fit the culture of the company, overall. Furthermore, the employees’ manager must take an active interest in their employee’s goals and help them succeed. Support from management is essential in retaining key employees.

Therefore, it’s essential to keep a Billing Clerk just as happy as an SEC Reporting Accountant and a .NET Developer just as motivated as a Help Desk professional, and so on.

Recently, CEB Blogs covered the importance of retaining high-performing accounting and finance professionals. So much so, that they reported 55 percent of high-producing professionals are slated to move on from their current employers to other companies in efforts to achieve long-term career goals.

At Brilliant™, we say that if you understand your accounting, finance and IT employees’ goals and provide them with career development along the way, you’ll have a higher chance of retaining them and preventing these high-producing professionals from resigning prematurely and driving them to move on elsewhere.

We’d like to share with you a few strategies for keeping your top accounting, finance and IT professionals:

1. Train and grow from within

If leadership offers a robust training program and provides regular coaching and mentoring in order to refresh your employees with the basics and industry updates, it shows commitment to the employee’s growth. Additionally, promoting accounting, finance and IT professionals internally without going outside of the company to hire leadership, shows that you count on and trust the expertise of your own employees. This will also increase loyalty, and ultimately your employees’ longevity with the company.

2. Recognize high performers

If someone consistently exceeds expectations and produces high-quality work at all times, you must recognize their achievements in some capacity. High demands from employers, without proper recognition or support, can lead to a loss of allegiance among employees. Alternatively, employees do like to be challenged (70 percent of employees that are challenged stay longer). Still, a little recognition can go a long way. From a verbal “Thank You” or “Great job” to eventual promotions and pay increases, both can show your high-performers that you value them. Whether they’re a Senior Accountant or a Technical Release Manager, accounting, finance and IT professionals will want to keep striving to outperform their peers if they know that they’ll get recognition for their hard work.

3. Have a shared purpose

It should be very clear what your employees’ personal and professional goals are and how they align with that of the company. Knowing what your employees want from you and effectively communicating what you expect from them, can have a positive and eye-opening effect for all. The company’s mission and vision should be at the forefront of everyone’s minds so that everyone is operating collectively and aiming for the same purpose. This will increase retention among your high performers and make them feel a part of the team for the long run.

Showing dedication to your employees and keeping them engaged can prevent premature resignations from your top talent.

What are some other ways to retain high performers? Comment below and let us know!

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