How rockstars can be beneficial to Singapore companies

A company’s culture may be one of the key deciding factors for Rockstar Talents when they are deciding a new employer. For the Average Joe, any company will do but not so for Rockstars.

Having successfully delivered a Consultancy project on reducing high attrition rate, I have discovered that the Average Joe will leave a successful company on the basis of career advancement or monetary increment but for the Rockstar, the reason for an exit from a successful company may typically be attributed to the culture of the Company or the lack of a culture that rocks.

Successful companies can no longer ignore that a Company Culture that rocks is a critical success factor to recruit top performers and drive performance. Creating a culture that attracts rockstar talent might require a few changes in how you lead your organization, but it’s well worth the effort.So, what are some of the building blocks of a great Company Culture?

1.  Shared Corporate Values is a good a starting point

It is the fault of leaders of a company if your company has a culture that stinks. Yes, leadership style inculcating the right values will set the tone for the rank and files. A value-driven company usually has a thriving culture that permeates the entire company.

Take Google for example. The leaders of the world’s most preferred employer have constructed a corporate culture that deeply believes in delegation. Individual employees are encouraged to speak their mind from the first day, and even decisions classically reserved for management, such as hiring, are done through a collaborative process.

Your corporate values need to be at the core of everything. Your senior executives must understand and embrace them together with the rest of your rank-and-file employees. That means you’ll have to act accordingly too.

2.  Paint a Vision Rockstars Can Believe in and Embrace

Rockstars usually long to be part of something they believed is important and bigger than them. Find that, articulate what you do in those terms, and you’ll have rockstars beating down your doors to be a part of it. And, they won’t quit because someone next block offered them a fancy designation or a little more pay.

When a common vision is shared, your employees will be creative and they will perform at a higher level. Of course, that means you’ll need to spend time ensuring they understand the vision, how success is defined, and be willing to provide feedback when needed; but when that happens, get out of the way and watch incredible things happen.

3.  Celebrate the Big and Small Victories

If you don’t celebrate the victories, it’s easy to go from one success to the other without ever feeling like you’ve been successful. There’s always another challenge to overcome, if you don’t celebrate success, it soon feels like you’re always jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

At our company, we celebrate and reward all kinds of successes, be it Marketing Day or Quarterly Goals or individual milestones or a new record. We realized that the winners at this month’s Marketing Day are totally different from last month’s, an indication that success breeds success and celebration of successes can drive more success.

To create a culture that celebrate victories, big and small, your rockstars will no longer leave because they are in a company whereby the only time employees get invited to chat with the boss is when they’re on the hot seat.  Rockstars appreciate some sincere recognition for a job well done from time to time.  

Once you built a great culture that rock, it must be complemented by the right hiring and talent management policies. In making recruitment decisions, you’ll need to hire those that fits with your company culture. Unfortunately, that also means cultural fit could be a go/no go metric for any new hire. Using a job-centric profiling tool is highly recommended.

At our company, we discovered that ensuring a cultural match result in significant reduction in the likelihood of poor hires. The additional costs of such profiling tool are worth every cent of it.

It calls for a paradigm shift in management mindset too. Firstly, we must learn to pass on a candidate who is talented and highly qualified, but just not the right personality or mentality for your company’s culture. And in some cases, it even means firing a strong performer who is not culturally aligned.

Indeed, holding on to those that don’t (or won’t) hurts morale and negatively impacts company culture. Part of hiring and retaining rockstars requires that you let go those that don’t measure up. Your highest performers want to work with other high achievers—it helps them perform at their best.