Most businesses would agree that keeping the most skilled employees at their firm is often the defining principle between working as a market leader or taking second, third, fourth, or fifth place. After all, all companies are comprised of individuals, and the policies and practices are decided by those professionals. The only reason Microsoft is the highest-valued company in the world right now is because it attracts some of the best programmers, product designers, software engineers, and developers in the industry.

As such, it’s important to try and retain your most skilled staff. Each highly-skilled individual who leaves your firm is a hit to your business unless they’ve had a recent trend of failing to meet targets or causing reputational damage to your brand, which is usually quite rare at this level.

However, because highly skilled individuals are often in real demand, it’s important to provide them with real justifications to stay in your firm and avoid the headhunters looking to poach them for your competitors. Let’s consider some advice for achieving that, below:

Provide A Highly Attractive Compensation Package

It’s important to be realistic – no employee is going to stay at your firm simply for the love of it. A software engineer at Apple may love the brand and appreciate their innovative approach to design, but if they’re offered a great deal more to work for a competitor, that loyalty can dry up quickly. That’s why a full benefits package, a competitive salary, and benefits like finding cars for sale to use as a company car can be ideal. This way, there will always be a reason to sign a contract with you.

Add Reasonable Considerations In Your Contracts

Many companies with highly-achieving individuals will have a non-compete clause in their contracts when hiring people at the top level. Put simply, highly skilled individuals can quite easily leave a firm and run their own business if they wanted to, taking all that knowledge with them. That doesn’t mean you can force them to stay of course, this isn’t servitude. However, it does mean a leaving employee can’t sustain themselves as a competitor for a certain amount of time, and within the same market or space. It’s a realistic clause that helps you avoid intellectual theft or poaching your staff (their friends) to curate their next step. It means that when staff do leave, they at least won’t cause damage to your firm.

Share Credit & Autonomy

Individuals at the top level of a company are rarely happy with benign directed by people who know less than them. They intend to contribute to the plans of the company and its goals. They often require credit for their work, and if it makes sense for your firm, to have dominion over a department they can exert authority over, delivering on your goals within the process they see as most suitable. Sharing credit also allows their professional efforts to sustain their own brand and reputation, which can allow them to feel connected to your mission. It’s why many software packages will have a credits page to serve as proof of work.

With this advice, you’ll use a few helpful measures of retaining staff in your firm, or at the very least, limiting the damage of their loss.