How To Retain Key Employees Through a Leadership Change

Leadership changes happen often.

While they can have a positive impact on the company, one of the biggest challenges is retaining key employees.

Your top performers may be scouting other opportunities and often have new jobs lined up.

But the secret to retention is to give your star players a reason to stay.

By providing clear information regarding the change, involving your staff, and selling them a future of what they can gain, you'll be able to retain your key employees.

In fact, the top performers are not only likely to stay.

But they'd cooperate effectively with the new leadership team as well.

Provide Clear Information on the Leadership Change

During a leadership transition, everyone in the company looks for the worst.

According to Peter Cappelli, president of consultancy Leadership Development Inc., if you don't tell your staff members the changes, they may read between the lines and even make it up, thinking of the worst-case scenarios.

Having effective internal communication tools in place will allow you to share information with your team and avoid rumors. Using internal videos, podcasts, or company newsletters each have their own benefits depending on the individual company’s culture.

Give as much information as you can to help your team members come to the same conclusion. We recommend informing your team members both in person and via video. You might consider making a separate video for top performers to highlight the changes and how they can be involved.

Here are step-by-step instructions that can help you prepare your videos.

1. Plan your speech: It’s a stressful time for your employees. Be respectful and give your team the information they need to move forward.
2. Practice: There's nothing worse than the leader stumbling, rambling, or mumbling on tape. Practice so you’ll sound clear and confident.
3. Shoot: Go for a minimal background as it helps the viewer focus on you and the content you’re delivering.
4. Edit the video accordingly: If you're a startup or small business on a tight budget, you can edit the video yourself with Adobe Premiere Pro.
5. The new leader should also introduce themselves with a blog post. Always compress images and videos to add them to blog posts. It helps in quick loading. A blog post acts as a formal introduction to help team members ease themselves into a new leadership.

Here's an example from Massimo, Armando and Gary, new directors of BreadCrumbs, a revenue acceleration platform.

Image via breadcrumbs.io

Involve Your Key Staff and Top Performers

Top performers tend to worry that their role, position in the company, and even internal network may quickly change with a new leader.

It's essential to involve your top performers early on, so they feel valued and trust the new leadership change.

Leadership changes often come with changes to internal processes and procedures. Making executive decisions from the top down may lead to a feeling of exclusion and resentment among your team.

Here are some key areas where decisions should involve key staff and performers:

• Finances: Restructuring the finances of a company, seeking loans, or making any changes which will affect team budgets should be discussed with upper management and the finance department. Consult team leaders as well to understand budget requirements for specific teams.
• Internal processes: Changes in leadership may bring about some much-needed changes in internal processes and in general operational procedures. Whether you’re automating workflows or switching to a new CRM, conducting a workflow analysis and collecting feedback from the involved teams is critical to a smooth and successful transition.
• Marketing strategy: Marketing is a common vertical for strategic changes. Achieving solid SEO ranking, creating a consistent brand voice and image, and building a loyal social media following are all marketing activities that take time to cultivate. Any changes made in this department should be made with utmost care and only after consulting with the marketing team.

Generally, the more you can include star performers with leadership changes and implementation of new projects, the more likely they'll stay and help the leader implement these new changes.

Sell the Future

Since your top performers are always looking for potential problems, the leadership team must sell the future of the company.

Any issues like divided leadership and lack of direction are generally good reasons for top staff to seek employment elsewhere.

Highlighting new opportunities and presenting a united front, are often appealing foundations when it comes to transitioning leadership.

We recommend managers have personalized conversations with career-driven people by sharing with them new responsibilities, and future career and leadership opportunities amidst the leadership change.

Provide Financial and Non-Financial Incentives

Retaining key employees through a leadership change may be tricky.

Overall, leaders and managers should communicate the situation to your top employees respectfully and thoughtfully, ensuring they feel valued and in control of the situation.

Involve them in the transitioning process and sell them the future of the company with a mix of both, non-financial and financial incentives.

Financial incentives may include additional employee benefits, bonuses, or raises.

These incentives may be added as part of financial restructuring within the company so as not to be viewed as “bribes” for compliance.

Non- financial incentives can include employee training programs, mentorship, flexibility to work from home, or even paid time off.

Value your top employees.

Show that you care and respect them.

You’ll be on the road to retaining top performers while attracting emerging talent.