Cameron Herold says there's no one retention trick that works for everyone. Instead, CEOs should figure out what each key employee actually wants, whether that's autonomy, equity, visibility, or something else, then build their deal around that. At 1-800-GOT-JUNK, growth and visibility kept him engaged more than profit sharing.
Chapters
Well, I'm going to tell you something right from the beginning. There's no such thing as a golden handcuff. There's no such thing as a golden handcuff program. There's certainly not a program that will ever keep any of your key employees with you for five years or longer. So let me walk you through how you can keep key employees. And it's not a golden handcuff program. Or if it is, it's not one that you've ever been exposed to before. So here's how it works. The idea is to remember that every single person that works for you is intrinsically satisfied by different things. There's certain things that actually kind of make their boat float that, that keep them happy. And you have to figure out what those one or two things are per person and tailor a program that really satisfies that person and shows them that you basically are the solution for their next five years. So I'll give you some examples of this. Let's say that you've got some key employees. If you look across your organization and you have your God forbid they ever quit people, right? These are the who you know, well, God forbid they ever quit because you really want to keep them in your company for at least five to 10 years. So if you had a program kind of that one size fits all program for everybody, it wouldn't work. Because some of your key employees want to have more of a results only work environment. Some of them want flex time, some want more vacation time. Some want more responsibility. Some want less responsibility. Some want more visibility with the board of directors or more visibility with the CEO. Some want to work on their executive MBA while they're there. Some want you to buy a company and let them run it. Some would like you to spin off a division and let them run that in time. Some want more profit sharing or more equity. Maybe they want phantom stock. Maybe they want, you know, more skills, skill development while they're there. So what you want to do is really get to know all of your key employees. Really get to know the one or two things that, that you can give them and show them how your company can deliver on those things so that they'll actually be satisfied over the next number of years. And when you do that, you've got them locked up. So if I think back to even at the time that I was at 1, 800, got junk, you know, I was the second in command for 1, 800, got junk. And we had a profit sharing program. The profit sharing program wasn't going to keep me locked up because I knew I could make more money being off on my own. The thing that kept me at 1-800-GOT junk was the ability to be the second in command, the ability to grow a company, be able to be seen as one of the co leaders of the company and the ability to do a lot of the speaking events and talk to the media to build my brand as a leader while I was there. So me knowing that the more that I did that, the more value I was going to have, that's what really kept me there for the six and a half years. Amazingly, it was 20 years ago this week that I walked into 1-800-got junk for my first day at the company where there were 14 employees. When I left six and a half years later, we had 3,100 employees. System wide, quite the ride. Anyway, there's an idea for you on how to lock up your key employees, really get to know them and structure a program that satisfies and keeps them, but is not a program that is kind of a one size fits all.
