Want to Win Back Talent? These Entrepreneurs Tell you How "We have been successful in retaining our outgoing employees through flexible work timings and work-from-home options for an obligatory course of time"

Employee attrition isn't new to entrepreneurs. Neither it's a pain unless you get overwhelmed by email resignations in your inbox every other day. This can't be tapped by just inflating the pay cheque or some cultural rejig with flexihours or having a pool table with swanky office interiors. So what entrepreneurs do to win back their prized talent discoveries?

We realized that in a lot of instances employees choose to move on because of concerns around their career growth and an inherent feeling of stagnation in their roles or when the company does not value their contribution. Though it sounds very obvious but it is often missed by employers and employees driven by emotions around the time of quitting. So to retain them, we often consider offering a change in their job responsibilities. Also, we increase their level of engagement with senior leadership members that makes them feel as an important part of the organization. For instance, when we see that the concerned employee working at our clients' location is not engaged with us on a regular basis, we ensure that a senior team member talks to him/ her on a frequently to try and attend to his concerns.

- Amit Kumar, Co-Founder & Director, Polestar

Employee attrition isn't new to entrepreneurs. Neither it's a pain unless you get overwhelmed by email resignations in your inbox every other day. This can't be tapped by just inflating the pay cheque or some cultural rejig with flexihours or having a pool table with swanky office interiors. So what entrepreneurs do to win back their prized talent discoveries? We have a big team of designers on board. For a designer especially, the most prized thing is to get global exposure. In the past we had a couple of them wanting to leave us because of the lack of an opportunity like this. So we decided to offer them visits to the countries from where we source our furniture such as Italy, Germany etc., to connect with designers there and interact with the creative heads for better exposure. We do this now for all our designers. This is to get encouraged and have a holistic learning experience which is a great motivational tool to hold back the talent.

- Alok Duggal, Founder and COO, Homestudio.com

While we have been successful in retaining our outgoing employees through flexible work timings and work-from-home options for an obligatory course of time but there is more to it. What has worked for us includes, permit relocation to their city of choice where we also have a presence; change in profile and department if the employee wants, provide sabbatical if he/ she is leaving to start something of their own or resolve their personal issues. We also create new role or opportunity for the employee based on his/her potential if they want to bring in a new dimension in their career graph.

- Sumit Gandhi, Chairman & CEO, ABEC Exhibitions and Conference

Most of the times, it is not remuneration but issues in the team, lack of opportunity, or even policy related. So after understanding the real problem and whether the employee can reconsider his decision of quitting, we offer counseling. In many cases after two-three years into the job, it becomes too monotonous for employees to continue. During counseling we explain to them about the new challenges and roles. For this we have also tied up with a career counseling agency. They help in re-identifying the goals with the outgoing employees. However, there are instances of time flexibility as well. For instance, a senior woman wanted to leave us because of her child. There were timing differences with her husband's job and there was no one to pick her child from school and spend some time with the child. So we offered her break of around three years in the afternoon and cover up that time by working for two-three additional hours. We were able to retain her.

- Jasal Shah, MD and CEO, Markelytics

(This article was first published in the November issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)