How do start-ups retain their brightest employees?

Start-ups have a perennial problem in retaining bright employees. The ones who join, often get disillusioned soon after and leave. Different industry leaders have different pointers on how start-ups can retain their brightest employees.Business financing leader StephenSheinbaum, the Chief Executive Officer of MCC, Merchant Cash and Capital believes in incentivizing teams to hire like-minded individuals. "Our people know what qualities and abilities their team needs to succeed. It's in their best interests to hire like-minded individuals," he says in an Inc article to SteveCody, Co-Founder of Peppercomm. People hired by the teams usually stay longer as they are specifically chosen by their colleagues to strengthen the team.

David Mandell, cofounder and CEO of astart-up ‘Boulder’, a Colarado-based Pivotdesk agrees. "Recruiters are now disappearing and our employees are the ones who find like-minded people who are most likely to excel at Pivotdesk," he told Cody in the same Inc article.A clear trend emerges where instead of recruiting form open markets, peer groups suggest like minded candidates who understand the workings of start-ups and their dynamics and are most likely to stay, compared to conventionally-hired candidates. Most companies provide incentives to employees who put in efforts to bring in new recruits.Money and perks are the obvious glues that help talented people stay in a startup. Many industry leaders like Sheinbaum,Mandelland others agree that for some of the really talented recruits, giving them real responsibility of jobs that create a big impact, contributes greatly to their sense of job satisfaction, which in turn enables them to invest more of themselves into the company and encourage them to stay on longer. They wear multiple hats and learn all aspects of the business from top to bottom. Once they have a sense of ownership, the likelihood of their staying on increases.

Michael McDonnel, Vice President of globaltalent acquisition at TOA Technologies, which was recently purchased by Oracle, believes that for retention employees should be given a sense of engagement and empowerment. "You have to give people the opportunity to own what they do," he says to Rebecca O Bagley a contributor for Forbes.

Diwakar Chittora founder of Intellipaat, an e-learning start-up from Jaipur, India believes in giving his employees especially young mums ‘work – from – home’ option. Helping employees in raising their young families with flexible hours makes them more committed and loyal, Diwakar feels.

Delhi-based Gigstart.com allows their pregnant employees to work from home all through their nine months of pregnancy. "As long as they can deliver what is expected of them, we don’t mind them working from home, "says Atit Jain, founder of Gig-start.com to Nandini Kumar of Bangalore Mirror.

Surjendu Kuila, Entrepreneur, and Co-Founder at Zopper.com believes in the power of selling your vison, your dreams. "All you need to do is sell your dream with conviction, be persistent, be fearless, be shameless and you will attract the right talent," he says. "One day, in bootstrap stage we needed to hire an engineer. We started going to IIT-Delhi - one of the premier technical institutes in Delhi.We talked to students there and talked about merits of joining a start-up. Those interactions did the trick. Our first employee – an engineer, who is still with us - joined us 2 years back leaving a final placement offer from Oracle. Sell your dream well and right people will follow," he concludes in a discussion on Quora.

Kai Stinchcombe, Founder at Aktana,Strategic District believes in giving his employees creative freedom. To retain them for long, know the things people normally hate about their jobs like – slow development cycles, inflexible big company policies, crappy management etc.; give them better options for all and people will stay at their jobs for long, even if it’s a start-up.

Salary and perks are important but not the key, few founders of startups feel. "There are some people who won't join if you can't pay them enough – e.g. if they have a mortgage or measure their success in terms of salary. If someone believes in the vision, they will join if they believe you will treat them well and they'll have enough to live on," says Stinchcombe on Quora while discussing strategies to retain talented employees.These are some of the strategies the founders of the start-ups employ, to keep their troops on board. The important thing is communicating the vision of a start-up to new recruits and existing employees. If they buy the vision, if they believe in the belief of the founder, loyalty follows. This article was first published by Bizenablr.comLink: http://bizenablr.com/articles/retain-the-brightest-employees

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