Staff retention may be the biggest and most critical challenge to face the post-acute care industry. To minimize staffing shortages, it's imperative to keep the productive employees you already have.

As a formal facilitator of human resource exchange groups, I've worked with human resources managers, business owners and managers from a variety of industries. Employee retention is always foremost in their minds. These experienced managers understand why employees stay or leave their organizations and offer the following tips.

Hire for culture fit. Spend time upfront in the hiring process to identify the soft skills that are successful in your organization then design behavior-based questions to interview for these soft skills. Look for things like good communication, positive attitude, initiation and good team playing.

Provide new employee orientation and on-going training. Employees should have a positive introduction to the company or facility. Introduce the new employee to the work, other employees and the company culture. Co-workers and managers can participate in the orientation.

Provide on-going skill training for the current job and cross-training on jobs in other departments. This will make the employee feel more valuable and they will provide more value to the company.

Some facilities pay for continuing education for their CNAs to become nurses, so they can grow and stay challenged.

Ensure competitive salary and benefits. Non-competitive compensation and benefit packages can prompt employees to seek employment elsewhere. Review salaries and benefits in comparable companies in the marketplace at least once a year.

Evaluate the effectiveness of supervisors and managers. People do not quit companies; they quit bosses. According to the Corporate Executive Board, 41 percent of "high-value employees" who intend to leave their organization are dissatisfied with the quality of their managers.

Can your managers:

• Set clear expectations?
• Train and develop employees?
• Flex their management style to the situation and the needs of employees?
• Provide positive and constructive feedback to employees?
• Evaluate and document performance?
• Resolve conflict situations productively?
• Communicate effectively and proactively?
• Intervene and resolve performance issues before they get out of hand?
• Treat all employees fairly, objectively and humanely?
• Relate to a diverse workforce?

If a manager is not performing these functions, then necessary training and/or coaching needs to take place.

Weed out non-performers. Nothing is more demotivating to productive employees than to work alongside a non-performing or abrasive employee. Counsel non-performers and terminate them when necessary. Let your competitor hire them.

Sell and resell the company. Re-recruit your good employees. Let them know that they are valuable and it is important that they feel a part of the organization. Encourage their positive and constructive feedback. Involve them in the decision-making.

Conduct employee opinion surveys and exit interviews. There are many helpful formal employee opinion surveys. If there is effective two-way communication between a supervisor and employee, an open discussion of what is working and not working can also be very effective. Ask the employee: "Please share with me what is important to you in keeping you at our company?"

Take action where needed. Make changes when the problems are identified--before the employee feels the need to leave the company. When employees voluntarily leave, exit interviews by someone other than the immediate supervisor are a good way of probing the real reason for leaving. Usually the reason given is not the underlying reason for prompting the employee to leave.

Beef up communication efforts. People assume the worst. There is a perception that when there's no communication, bad news is around the corner. Talk about good and bad news. Have individual and group meetings with employees.

Offer "soft" benefits and pass out "psychological" paychecks. Take the time to really understand what is important to each employee. Employees have different personality styles, generations and backgrounds.

Soft benefits and psychological paychecks can cost little or no money. Soft benefits could include flex-time, casual dress, job enrichment, job enlargement and a family-friendly work environment. Consider a time-off policy that combines vacation and sick time into flexible time off.

Psychological paychecks can be as easy as specific positive, verbal feedback; verbal and written notes of appreciation; formal recognition programs; a thank-you dinner for two; representing the company at a conference; or American Express money certificates.

The key is to match the motivator with the employee. Want to find out what the motivator is? Ask the employee!

The key to the success of a company is retaining highly productive and happy employees. Human resources is indeed the most important asset in a company. By implementing effective retention techniques you can "walk the talk."

Sue Romero is a human resources consultant and facilitator specializing in employee relations issues, manager coaching, management and team training. She has over 20 years experience coaching managers on enhancing their effectiveness. Her Web site is  www.romeroconsulting.com.