The Art of Retaining Top Talent: Clarity

Things change quickly in telecom and there’s a push for companies to be agile and ultra-responsive — to pivot. Just thinking about it causes slight torso strain. So how do you reconcile this posture with your employees’ need for stability and clarity around expectations and roles? How do you create a space for your employers to feel confident, secure, informed and that their efforts are working towards the broader strategy when the targets are moving?

Well, you can’t ignore it and just move with the market. Expectations need to be set internally or you’ll create unnecessary stress that will turn your team away from you. And once it starts, it can cascade, and that sturdy space that produces the great work that you were supposed to create is gone.

It’s about expected outcomes, not a list of tasks.

It’s crazy how many companies think they’re clarifying roles by delineating each role’s tasks. If the tasks aren’t producing the outcomes, they’re pointless. And not many workers, especially in telecom, like to be micromanaged, so keep the focus on results. Tell your workers what outcomes you expect their work to produce.

The Talk.

Once you talk about the outcomes then place those in broader context, so the importance of everyone’s work is apparent, and a shared understanding of their value to the company becomes transparent. And here is your segue into “The Talk”. OK, not that talk, but the talk about compensation, about money, and how your employees’ results, their outcomes, are tied to it. The clearer the map you lay out for this, the better chance you’ll have at succeeding.

Don’t Reschedule or Cancel 1-on-1s.

It’s easy for managers to let 1-on-1s lose priority, especially when it’s busy (or there’s a lot of “client” or “revenue” work). Don’t do it! These are really important, even if it seems there’s no news to report. As a manager, your vision is important, and it’s blinded when you fail to keep these meetings, and your workers will feel that lack of priority and their work will become less important to them.

About NextGen

NextGen is the brainchild of longtime telecom professionals with nearly 50 years of experience and millions of dollars in Telecom Recruiting Services. We focus on establishing long term relationships with our clients and candidates so we can recruit the best and the brightest in the telecom industry. This ‘quality over quantity’ approach is at the heart of everything we do and has resulted in successful job placements at Fortune 1000 firms worldwide.

Posted in