Engaging your pivotal talent

Are you engaging the right employees for the right reasons?

Companies often focus on retaining star performers or leadership talent, overlooking pivotal roles - the jobs that have an outsized ability to create (or destroy) value.

Focusing on engaging pivotal roles, not just key people, can help improve retention, while also improving company performance. It's important to understand what people in pivotal roles want from their work, and to find creative ways to motivate them. For some, non-financial incentives can work better than more money.

The reality is that many companies do not understand who their key talent is – never mind how engaged they are, whether they have the right incentive/reward models to keep them and the impact on the business of losing that talent. This means that key talent will be lost while ‘non talent’ may be over-incentivised.

Key questions for business leaders:

What are the roles that create disproportionate value for your company and do you have the right people in them?
Are the pivotal roles getting adequate resources and management attention?
How might you segment your workforce in ways that align with business goals, identify barriers to productivity and reveal opportunities for improvement?
How can you develop a solid, fact-based understanding of what really motivates your people in pivotal roles?
Do you have the right programs and incentives in place to motivate people in pivotal roles—from strong coaching and mentoring programs to work arrangements that inspire autonomy or creativity?
How can you create a work environment focused on results and individual value?
Does your succession planning cover pivotal roles, not just company leadership, and do you have a good pipeline of talent for those roles?