With all of the time, training, resources, and institutional knowledge your top-performing employees have, it can be incredibly damaging for a company to lose them to a competitor over slightly more pay or other incentive offers.
In this article, we will cover how competitors may attempt to find, recruit, and steal your top-performing employees, and how to spot the signs that may indicate your employees are considering a career switch on their own.
1. Identification
Companies are prone to sending their best workers to represent them at tradeshows, industry events, and other networking opportunities. Unfortunately, those offline places in addition to online platforms like LinkedIn often represent the best chances for your competitors to identify and potentially poach your top performers.
2. Offering Incentives
Once a competitor has identified one of your employees that they want to hire, they may begin to offer various benefits and incentive packages in an attempt to lure them away. Depending on how badly they want your employees, these can become quite lucrative and difficult to turn down.
3. Targeted Recruitment
Even when it isn’t your competitor directly, corporate headhunters or recruiters may identify your employees through the same methods listed above. These headhunters are often incentivized based on the pay that the employee eventually receives at their new job, so they have a vested interest in finding them good incentive packages and pay offers.
4. Strategic Approach
Between startups and incumbent firms moving into new lines of business, competitors with a need for rapid institutional knowledge or experience growth may choose to build it by poaching your employees. These can be difficult to stave off, as they often provide equity in the new venture, with a far smaller, more agile, and fun work environment than entrenched companies offer.
If a competitor has used one of the tactics listed above to identify and recruit one of your top-performing employees, the employee’s behavior may change in noticeable ways (if they have accepted or are considering the offer). Declining job satisfaction could be another reason for them to want a change, and may lead to the employee seeking other employment without being approached by the competition.
Here are a few important signs to be on the lookout for with your top-performing talent.
1. Decline in Engagement
Some organizations call it “short-timer’s syndrome,” when people who know they are on the way out of the door have a serious decline in work engagement. Even if the employee has not informed you of plans to leave, merely being in negotiations with a competitor may lead to a significant drop in their performance and engagement.
These could also be signs that one of your top employees is no longer satisfied with work. Even if there is no competitor attempting to poach them, job satisfaction is especially important for those employees whose performance your company depends on.
2. Increased Absenteeism
If any employee starts taking an increased number of sick days or has unexplained absences from work, this could be an indication that they are no longer happy at their position. If they are in negotiations with a competitor, it could be a sign that they’re taking advantage of accrued sick days before leaving.
Communication is critical in these instances, and a great opportunity to find out if there is something that you can do to improve the situation.
3. Networking or Job Searching
An employee who is starting to have second thoughts about their place at your company will often start seeking new jobs long before they say anything just to “test the market” and see what’s out there. It can be especially difficult to keep an eye out for this in a large organization, but it is an early indicator that an employee is no longer satisfied with their position, pay, opportunities, or incentives.
4. Lack of Interest in Long-Term Projects
An employee who does not expect to be with your company for the long term may shy away from taking on or participating in long-term projects. This may be most prevalent in the top performers who put a lot of care into their work, and who don’t want to “let the team down” by leaving before a project is finished.
5. Seeking Feedback
Worries about job security can be a significant issue for employees today. If one of your people begins to seek feedback about their performance or long-term prospects within the company, it may be a sign that they are worried that their future place and position at your firm may be in jeopardy.
6. Unexplained Resentment
Fear is the most common cause of anger in the human condition, so those worried employees mentioned above may express their fear through resentment. This resentment could also be a result of employees feeling as if they’ve been taken advantage of.
Perhaps they know that they perform more work than others but don’t feel appropriately compensated relative to other employees. This could be the culprit leading to them seeking employment elsewhere and is a difficult decision to reverse once they’ve made it.
In situations like this, it is crucial for managers to pay attention to their subordinates and notice any negative behavior changes such as these. Confronting and resolving resentment before it leads to action is the best way to prevent losing them.
7. Requesting Information About Benefits and Opportunities
Sudden requests to HR or managers about the specifics of their benefit plans, incentives, and promotions availability may be a sign that an employee is weighing their current package against other offers or potential opportunities outside of your firm.
8. Increased Privacy
If a previously gregarious and open employee suddenly becomes secretive about their work, discussions, or activities, it may be a sign that they are conducting job searches or even speaking with other employers. This is another potential sign that managers should keep an eye out for, and learn to carefully approach the situation to find the reason for the changes in behavior.
Managers who are cognizant of and trained to look out for the signs listed above can be your first line of defense against competitors poaching your top-performing employees, or job satisfaction leading your people to seek other opportunities elsewhere.
Early detection and proactive retention efforts can go a long way towards keeping your best people and institutional knowledge within your organization, and away from your competitors.
