So simple, so true!

Today's management tip "How to Retain Talent in a Recovery" from Harvard Business Online is so simple, yet so very true:

In an economic recovery, top talent — fed up with no bonuses and low morale — may want to jump ship as soon as the job market picks up. Here are three things you can do to keep your top talent where they are:

1. Launch efforts to rebuild trust. One of the things that suffers most in a recession is the trust between employees and employers. Show your employees that what was done in survival mode is not the norm going forward.
2. Adjust compensation and benefits. Keep your radar tuned to the job market and any signs that it is heating up. Adjust salaries to make up for lost bonuses and raises and to match the market.
3. Know your top talent. You not only need to know who they are, but what they want. Communicate with them regularly about their careers and how your company can support them.

Read this together with Seth Godin's post "Losing Andrew Carnegie", and it will be pretty clear that the messages above won't stick to the minds of management in most organizations:

Carnegie apparently said, "Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory."

Is there a typical large corporation working today that still believes this?

Most organizations now have it backwards. The factory, the infrastructure, the systems, the patents, the process, the manual... that's king. In fact, shareholders demand it.

It turns out that success is coming from the atypical organizations, the ones that can get back to embracing irreplaceable people, the linchpins, the ones that make a difference. Anything else can be replicated cheaper by someone else.