Speech at the Tallinn Business Forum 2019

How to retain valuable employees?

Business is always about people. Especially now, when technology is developing at insane speeds. You can find a profitable idea, but if you don’t have the people to bring it to life, it will remain an idea.
Everyone wants to have the best specialists in their business. The man, however,

seeks to find a better place and often goes to an employer offering more attractive conditions.

What are the opportunities to keep valuable employees in your company?

The simplest answer is money. Raise the salary and the employee will be happy. Yes, he will be happy only two or three months. And then what? Raise wages again?

Such a company will quickly go down the drain.

What other options are there?

If you do not engage in motivation through pseudo-startups, then the simplest and at the same time difficult, but perhaps the only option is to make employees co-owners of the enterprise. At the same time it

a technically simple solution may entail risks both for the person who becomes a co-owner and for the owner of the company.

The employee will have inflated expectations: after all, in addition to wages, he will also receive the right to dividends. FROM

The owner, in turn, expects the employee to treat the business with all his heart, “24 hours a week”, investing his money and time.

I know from personal experience: if from the very beginning all the conditions are not discussed with people (who exactly is given a share in the company, the expectations and obligations of both parties, and the like), then in less than a year a conflict is inevitable.

What to do?

You need to use the rules for attracting a business partner.

Before offering an employee a share in the company, the owner himself must answer ten questions on the topic “What kind of business partner do I need”?

In addition, 20 points of joint venture activities must be discussed with a potential business partner.

If you can agree with yourself (why you need a partner), as well as with a potential business partner (to achieve a common understanding of running a business and solving problems), then you have a chance to create exactly the kind of partnership in which a valuable employee not only does not leave your company, but you will get a business partner to help grow your business.

This is exactly what financial consultant, partner of BFA Estonia Ron Luvishchuk will tell at the Tallinn Business Forum on September 12, 2019