What motivates talent to stay? The keys to retaining your best people

When it comes to retaining talent, employees need to feel like there's a secure future in the company they are working at. How do you create that sense of growth and opportunity?

It's important to spend time engaging with your team to help them understand how their work directly affects the company’s growth. This helps you reinforce positive behavior while addressing unhelpful behavior. Meanwhile it helps them realize that the success of the company and their future job security is affected by their contribution.

Here are 5 ways to engage your top performers and motivate them to stay:

A meaningful vision - In order for employees to feel like their work makes a difference, be sure to clearly articulate where your company is headed. How is your company making the world a better place? At the same time, make sure the vision is merely a nice sounding, lofty ideal but help them see how their work is aligned to the vision and helps to make it a reality.

Growth-oriented goal setting - Another big way to motivate talent is to give them the opportunity to grow and advance in their skills and exposure. How do you make this happen? Mentor them and give them opportunities to learn from other senior, more experienced team members, and give them access to learning resources and opportunities. Setting learning and development goals for them will help them see how they have the opportunity to progress in your company. Hitting those goals could lead to further growth rewards, from career advancement, to shares in the company, to training and development.

Fairness and transparency - No matter how good the growth opportunities you may be giving to your staff are, they will be tempted to leave if there is the slightest suspicion that favoritism comes into play when promotions and career advancement opportunities are given. Ensure that you have clear metrics - and explain those metrics - for measuring performance, so that whenever anyone is given a promotion or a great opportunity, everyone knows it is a well-deserved one.

Great work culture - Don't underestimate the value of creating a great environment that people don’t want to leave. This can done through perks and benefits - but also by creating a culture that encourages strong interpersonal relationships. People don't want to leave because they feel like their colleagues are their family.

Salary - The last motivating factor is compensation - which is the easiest to implement, but hardly as effective. People will stay only as long as you pay them more than others. Even then, without growth opportunities and a great work environment, the pay may not be enough to keep the best people - as they would be growth-driven people, always seeking to learn.