Placing a Premium on Top Talent

Employers Look Beyond Compensation to Attract and Retain Employees
Today's employers acknowledge that it is more expensive to attract and train new employees than to keep the old ones. The 2007 Mercer Survey of over 580 companies in the U.S. and Canada indicates that majority of employers are shifting their focus from using base pay alone to attract top talent.

The Importance of Branding
Among employers, competition for the right talent means strengthening their employer brand. Most of today's employers consider the challenge of keeping their organizations attractive enough to draw in quality employees and retain them as top priority. This, while still ensuring that their company's culture and values remain intact.

Solving a Dilemma
To bridge the gap between employee wants and organizational goals, employers must tread the line between providing the right incentives to attract and retain strategic talent using strategies that will still protect their bottomline. So far, 74% of the organizations responding to the Mercer survey indicate that they have, at least partially, aligned business strategies with employee reward systems. About 15% have reported complete alignment between these two goals.

Keeping Pace
Manpower remains the driving force for nearly all businesses, so corporations must make serious efforts now to evaluate their retention and rewards strategies in order to remain competitive in the marketplace.