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There’s a great article in Inc. magazine online today about employee retention.  The article gives a lot of tips–some unique and obviously thoughtful, which is nice to see.  Some of the great advice includes having regular check-ins with your employees so that you can preempt and resolve issues before they become cause for termination or resignation, never burning bridges, and always making sure that an employee is challenged so he can make mistakes, learn and constantly grow. Some of the advice, however, made me think about its practicality.  While all of it is good in theory, some just don’t translate well into the real world.

Have a trial period – This is really good in theory, but not so much in practice.  While I agree that a trial period is great not just for the company to evaluate the employee but also for the employee to evaluate the company, the question is, “what happens if it’s not a good match?”  You have spent countless hours and dollars recruiting this person, went through the trouble of hiring him, rejected other potential candidates, and have dumped some time into his training.  Now that you want to be rid of him, you’ve sunk a ton of resources already and the other candidates that you were considering probably have found other jobs already.  That means you have to start from scratch.  While there are companies that can afford to do this, many can’t.  On the flip side, what does it mean for the recent hire?  He has to start from scratch too (and he may also have turned down alternate job offers to work for you – job offers that are most likely no longer available to him).  What if he is one of those who dropped everything and/or moved a thousand or more miles to take your job?  Being let go after 3 months would be catastrophically demoralizing.  The same goes for if he’s not thrilled with you.  He’s sunk so much into the decision that it’s impractical to leave.  I know that having a trial period sounds like a good hedge to your hiring mechanism, you have to think about the possible fallout.

Hire people who live close to the office — According to the article, long commutes are detrimental to work-life balances.  I definitely believe this is true and people obviously look for work within a certain radius of where they live (if they’re not looking to relocate).  However, I have had jobs that I’ve loved that I commuted 2 hours each way for and I have had jobs I’ve hated that took me 20 minutes to get to.  I think the point Inc. is trying to make is that while people might like the job 2 hours away, they won’t be able to do it forever and will therefore leave.  Therefore, hiring people who live close increases retention, which is technically logical.  My point is that if someone is completely in love with their work, moving closer might not be out of the question.

Have untraditional vacation policies — I think this works depending on how “untraditional” they are.  The scenario described, of having a pool of days that doesn’t expire, might actually work really well.  I come from an environment that doesn’t have a vacation policy (and people can take what they need, provided their manager approves) and that works terribly for most people because of the guilt factor.  If there’s no limit all of a sudden, people keep wondering if they’re abusing the privilege.  Therefore, it’s really important to think about informal implications.  It may be a good marketing ploy during hiring, but those hires might feel duped later.

Administer personality tests during the hiring process — From personal experience with this, I think it’s a terrible idea.  I know that this is well intentioned: you want a non-traditional way to see whether your potentials have the “soft” qualities you’re looking for.  In reality, there’s no way you’re going to get this from administering these tests.  Firstly, this is true because people will rehearse for them as they do for interviews.  If you’re hiring smart people, they will do their homework.  They will come to the interview knowing what your firm is about, what qualities you’re looking for, and what tests you’re going to be giving them.  They will then answer the questions how they think you want them to be answered.  While it’s possible to tell with some candidates that they’re trying too hard, it might not be with most others.  Secondly, and thusly, publicizing your intent to give personality tests sends a very specific message about your firm — that you’re fluffy and naïve.  Most people have a negative opinion of personality tests because they are rarely reflective of your true self.  Whether you’re consciously prepping for them or are answering them from the perspective of the person you want to be, you’re never really revealing your true personality.

Setting goals with rewards — This seems more like bribery than motivation to me.  If you’re hiring good people, the rewards you should be offering them, and which should be sufficient for them, are career-related (progression, promotion, compensation, responsibility, recognition, etc.).  While I admit that it’s possible that I’m not the norm employee that is being described here, I know I wouldn’t bend over backwards for an iPod at the end of the quarter.  I absolutely believe in setting goals.  100% believe.  However, the rewards that should be attached should be professional development and progression goals, not stuff.

Are there other methods that people have tried with sucess or failure?

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I am seeing a continuous stream of companies whose hiring strategy is simply irrational.  Everyone seems to be of the impression that hiring amazingly talented and highly driven people is what makes the company successful.  The reality is that this is both true and false.

Reasons why this is true are obvious; reasons why this may be false are sometimes never even thought of.

The real answer to the question lies in what kind of company you are running and, more importantly, what the job you’re hiring someone to do is.

It’s fine (and generally preferred) to have an aggressive hiring strategy that only recruits geniuses if you are a manufacturer of space shuttles for NASA, for example.  Here, you are hiring people to build something that is supposed to shoot human beings miles into space, keep them alive in a hostile outside environment and then bring them back to Earth in one piece.  A job like this is, what I can only imagine to be, very challenging and highly motivating (I mean, peoples’ lives are in your hands!).  Smart people flock to jobs like these because their difficulty presents the constant mental challenge they require and their high-impact gives them the fuzzy warm feeling that what they do matters (and it does).

What if, on the other hand, you are a consultant bookkeeper, looking to hire people to look at two spreadsheets and make sure the numbers on them are the same?  What happens when you hire super genius, highly ambitious people to make sure “1″ equals “1″?  Well, at first, they’re going to naively start on a course to become the best 1-equals-1 checker there is.  Since they’re super smart, that won’t take long.  Once they’ve achieved this, they’re going to start clamoring for the next challenge?  Your bookkeeping operations better have a next step waiting because if it doesn’t, that’s when the genius starts questioning why he’s working there.  Is it because the job is meaningful and enjoyable?  As enjoyable as scanning spreadsheets may be, there’s not a lot of world-changing involved in it.  Because the smarty is not a quitter, however, she might chug along for a little while, trying to find a reason to be happy, but sooner or later, she’s out.  So what good did it do your company to hire Ms. Genius?  Not a whole lot.  You spent time and money recruiting and scouring for the best and then you spent more of both to train her.  But smart people in not smarts-demanding jobs are a huge flight risk. That means hiring them is not the key to your success.  In cases like these, you just need someone who is very perceptive, detail-oriented and dedicated.

Don’t overshoot your hiring qualifications.  Just like hiring someone underqualified is a bad idea, hiring someone who is overqualified is an even worse idea.  At least you can teach and develop the underqualified one.  The overqualified is out the door as soon as he walks in.

Take a very honest and objective look at the position(s) you’re hiring for.  How much intellectual rigor does it actually require?  Do you need an academic or do you need a hard worker or do you need both?  Think about what kind of person you think would not only do the job well but enjoy doing it for an extended period of time.  Think about the positions’ career progressions and possibilities.  Kidding yourself will only hurt you later.  There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you only need mediocre people for a job function because there are mediocre job functions for those people to fill.  None of this reflects poorly on your company, on the kind of business you do, or on you.

Not everyone can be a doctor; someone needs to be the janitor.  If you’re running a cleaning service, the last thing you need is a bunch of doctors pushing mops around.