WHITE PAPER

The CEO’s Guide to Top

Performer Retention
Retaining and growing top talent
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Introduction
Retaining top performers is imperative in today’s competitive landscape. Learning how to keep and grow high-performing employees

is a key concern for both CEOs and human resource professionals. A recent study conducted by LinkedIn finds “the new normal for

Millennials is to jump jobs four times in their first decade out of college. That's nearly double the bouncing around the generation before

them did.”1

The potential economic impact caused by a loss of high performers is incalculable. How can CEOs expect to weather economic recovery,

let alone grow businesses, when A-list employees are flying toward the exits?

Fortunately, there are steps you can take today to grow and retain of your top talent. This guide provides three key tips for leveraging

proven talent management principles, practices, and technologies to retain your top performers.

1 “The new normal: 4 job changes by the time you're 32.” Heather Long, CNN, April 12. 2016.
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1. Provide career advancement opportunities

A 2016 study shows 1 in 3 employees are planning to leave their current organization within the next 12 months,

mostly due to the lack of career progression opportunities.2 Employees are more engaged and motivated when they

are empowered with some level of control over their careers and future paths. However, a majority of organizations

are missing out on the opportunity to partner with employees in creating career growth: 68% of employees say their

managers aren't actively engaged in their career development.3 While HR and business leaders should not be in the

business of building development plans for every employee – as there are always a good number of employees who

will not embrace the activity –organizations need to deliver personalized development, learning and career planning

opportunities that empower employees to take control over their own careers.

With only 34% of companies focusing on developing and retaining current employees it’s clear there’s room for

improvement.4 And improving opportunities for career advancement has proven results. Research conducted by

human resource consulting firm Lee Hecht Harrison in partnership with the Human Capital Institute shows that 81% of

organizations who are committed to talent mobility report on- or above-target revenue growth — compared to 68% of

other organizations.5

By bridging employee development and succession planning, employees can more easily develop themselves for

future roles of interest and those who are not ready for advancement can be assigned detailed development plans

that guide them to improve the competencies and skills required for new job positions.

Organizations can establish learning paths and assign specific courses for employees to facilitate their career growth.

By providing the proper tools to employees, CEOs can take a more active role in reducing high performer flight while

promoting growth and engagement.

2 “Future Proofing HR: Bridging the Gap Between Employers and Employees.” Mercer, 2016.
3 “Two-Thirds of Managers Need Guidance on How to Coach and Develop Careers.” Right Management, March 11, 2015.
4 “Companies Ambivalent on Hiring from Within.” American Management Association, February 3, 2015.
5 “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Lateral Career Moves for Professional Growth - Moving Sideways Could Lead to Better Opportunities.” Melissa Leiner,
LinkedIn, May 11, 2016.
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2. Improve engagement to drive productivity

Business leaders are recognizing the importance of an engaged workforce and its potential to drive business

performance and impact the bottom line. Engaged employees are invested in the success of their organizations.

Highly engaged employees are:

• 2.5 times more likely to stay at work late if something needs to be done after the normal workday ends

• more than twice as likely to help someone at work even if they don’t ask for help

• more than three times as likely to do something good for the company that is not expected of them6

Extensive research over the past decade reveals that an engaged workforce impacts business performance, and

ultimately, shareholder value. Put simply, companies with higher percentages of engaged employees perform better

than their industry peers. These companies have:

Better financial performance

Higher employee retention

Increased customer satisfaction

Higher productivity

Meaningful performance feedback is a new and popular way to keep employees engaged in their roles and increase

productivity. Engagement is three times greater when managers hold regular meetings with employees.7 Employees

who work for a manager who helps them set performance goals are 17 times more likely to be engaged than

disengaged. In contrast, employees who strongly disagree that their manager helps them set performance goals are

6 “Employee Engagement Benchmark Study 2015.” Temkin Group Research, 2015.

7 “Employees Want a Lot More From Their Managers.” Jim Harter and Amy Adkins, Gallup, April 8, 2015.
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almost seven times more likely to be disengaged than engaged.8 Setting performance goals and delivering feedback on

goal attainment will engage your employees in their growth and inspire them to perform better.

A talent mobility strategy, in particular, enables CEOs to more effectively acquire, align, develop, engage and retain

high performing and potential talent by implementing a consistent, repeatable and global process for talent rotation.

Retaining top performers also provides significant and tangible cost savings since current research shows replacement

costs range from 100-200% of a departing employee’s salary.9

3. Build a performance-oriented culture

Best-in-class organizations work to develop an overall culture that values high performance. One reporter explains,

“Having great company culture is no longer just an option. Today’s workers consider it as much as they consider

salary and benefits. In fact, fantastic company culture is almost expected along with other traditional benefits.”10 The

challenge in shifting culture lies in effectively aligning employee goals with organizational objectives, automating

performance management processes and linking them with complex compensation policies or time-based incentive

plans at an enterprise level.

With a well-designed system for rewarding performance, employees at all levels of the organization will understand

what they need to do to support company objectives. The workforce becomes more accountable – which is

increasingly important these days – and can see the impact of their contributions.

The key technology components required to enable a performance-oriented culture are:

1. P
 erformance Management: Automates and standardizes the goal-setting and review process and aligns employee

development and goals with corporate objectives. Performance Management enables organizations to direct

employee efforts in support of organizational goals and strategic initiatives, and to motivate employees to optimize

their performance.

8 “Should Managers Focus on Performance or Engagement?” Annamarie Mann and Ryan Darby, Gallup, August 5, 2014.
9 “What Was Management Thinking? The High Cost of Employee Turnover.” Karlyn Borysenko, ERE Media, April 22, 2015.
10 “10 Examples of Companies with Fantastic Cultures.” Sujan Patel, Entrepreneur, August 6, 2015.
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2. C
 ompensation Management: Simplifies planning, modeling, budgeting, analysis, and execution of compensation

policies. Compensation Management enables organizations to develop and apply consistent and competitive

compensation plans to all employees that will attract and retain top talent.

3. Incentive Compensation: Motivates employees and manages total financial rewards within an organization.

Incentive Compensation streamlines incentive policy administration and provides long-term planning for both

market- and performance-based plans, as well as variable pay flexibility for individuals, teams, sales, or executives.

4. R
 eporting and Auditing: Provides accessible and secure cross-functional compliance reports and audit trails of

all transactions related to compensation and performance. Reporting and Auditing aggregates key information to

facilitate timely decision making.

Creating or changing organizational culture is challenging. The return on time and energy invested makes these

changes worthwhile: “Organizations that are able to set very clear and aligned values and processes will consistently

outperform those that cannot. Furthermore, leaders who understand when it’s time to do things differently in order to

stay relevant are those that are best able to adapt their organizations to changes in the business environment.”11

Conclusion
To summarize, visionary CEOs can take active steps to promote top performer retention by:

1. Providing career advancement opportunities

2. Improving engagement to drive productivity

3. Building a performance-oriented culture

A cohesive HR and talent management infrastructure is a key requirement in moving forward with these steps.

11 “How Exceptional Companies Create High Performance Cultures.” Chris Cancialosi, Forbes, June 15, 2015.
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Why choose SumTotal?

1. W
 e offer comprehensive talent solutions that features a complete system to help you optimize the entire

employee lifecycle.

2. W
 e’ve taken a different approach to product and technology integration. While everyone else is still talking about

product integration, it’s a reality with us today. And no one in the industry can match our ability to integrate

data with other HR systems; other enterprise systems, like CRM and POS; and even popular third party sites like,

salesforce.com and LinkedIn.

3. T
 he SumTotal Talent Expansion® Suite simplifies the growth of organizational capabilities and engages your people

with innovative solutions to know, mobilize, develop, promote and reward your workforce.

4. Our talent solutions are completely integrated with learning and workforce solutions.

5. Our professional services teams are committed to your success — before, during and after implementation.

6. We put your people first. We’ll help your people be their best.

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About SumTotal
SumTotal Systems, LLC, a Skillsoft Company, is the only HR software provider to deliver Talent Expansion™ solutions that

help organizations discover, develop and unleash the hidden potential within their workforce. SumTotal goes beyond

traditional talent management and HCM applications, offering contextual and pervasive HR solutions that actually help

improve employee performance in real time.

More than 3,500 organizations, including some of Fortune’s “Best Places to Work,” rely on SumTotal’s award winning

solutions to empower their employees. For more information, visit www.sumtotalsystems.com.

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