Every organisation has its key posts and key people, both of which often warrant special attention when it comes to monitoring labour turnover and devising retention strategies. This paper contains:
A guide to the key posts and key people in your organisation
Key posts can exist at all levels of the organisation. They can be defined as those posts which need to be occupied by competent people, and which cannot be kept vacant if the organisation’s core business is not to suffer. At a senior level, the strategic importance of such posts is often recognised by the existence of a succession plan, to enable immediate substitution if the current post-holder leaves.
Key people can be defined as such for a variety of reasons. Often, they are experts in a particular field — but they could also be the organisation’s visionaries, or skilled people managers and motivators. One group of key people is sometimes described as ‘corporate glue’ — those whose knowledge of the company’s procedures, employees, history and core business make them invaluable advisors and reference points. Graduate trainees on accelerated promotion schemes are often categorised as key people, by virtue of the enormous amount of time, attention and money that has been invested in them.
Risk analysis can help to quantify the seriousness of losing key people, or of key posts becoming vacant.
The process to be followed is described below.
Step 1 — identify an occurrence which could present problems, e.g. your IT expert leaving to join your main competitor.
Step 2 — estimate the likelihood of this occurring. You could use a three point scale (low, medium or high risk), or, if you want to be more sophisticated, a five or even a ten point scale.
Step 3 — estimate how serious the effects would be of such an occurrence, using the same scale as in step 2.
Step 4 — add the two scores together to arrive at an overall ‘risk score’ for the occurrence. The higher the risk score, the more beneficial it will be to your organisation to retain the particular individual. You will need to come to a decision about deciding when to take action — typically, using ten point scales, a risk score of ten or more could be considered to warrant action.
The benefits of carrying our risk analyses is that they will enable you to build up a picture of the ‘hot spots’ in your organisation, in terms of its key people, posts and groups of employees. Special retention initiatives targeted at these hot spots should bring particular rewards, and can be justified to the organisation because of the business advantages they will bring. Below is a Risk Analysis Questionnaire and a model showing how to prioritise action.
You can use this questionnaire to establish the risk of key staff losing. It looks at two things, how likely it is that your key staff will leave, but also the consequences of them leaving.
Retention risk analysis: Likelihood. On the basis of what you know about the employee, please rate the risk of the person leaving. Things to consider may be family commitments / ties, age, career progression, potential in the organisation compared to outside it and morale. High risk = likely to leave as soon as possible. Moderate risk = likely to leave in next 2 years. Low risk = unlikely to leave in next 2 years
1. Attrition Risk: High/Moderate/Low
Retention risk analysis: Consequences. Think about the consequences or impact of this employee leaving the company tomorrow. Please rate this eventuality on the following scales:
2. Impact on product/service delivery:High/Moderate/Low
3. Ease of replacement: High/Moderate/Low
(internal or external)
4. Costs of replacement: High/Moderate/Low
5. Advantage to competitors: High/Moderate/Low
(skills, knowledge, expertise)
Does this matter?
The results of this exercise should be checked against the model of action below. If the likelihood is high, but the impact low, you don’t really need to worry. Similarly, if the impact is low and the likelihood low, there is no need for immediate action.
However, if the impact is high you need to take care – even if the risk is low. When both the risk and the impact are high there is the most danger – when staff are in this box, or even approaching it, you need to take some action.
A model of action
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| Likelihood |
|
|
| High | Low |
Impact | High | Danger | Watching Brief |
| Low | “Thanks for all you’ve done…” | No immediate action |