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Excerpt from an article by Arihant Patni To read more, visit  LinkedIn "Managing Director at Hive Technologies Key employee retention is critical to the long-term health and success of your business. Retaining best employees ensures customer satisfaction, product sales, satisfied coworkers and reporting staff, effective succession planning and organizational knowledge and learning. As job hopping is increasingly becoming the norm, thanks in part to a workforce comprised of more millennial's who are likely to have twice as many jobs over their lifetimes as their predecessors, the baby boomers, let’s take a look at some key takeaways on how you can retain your best employees. Financial stability motivates people to stay in a job, that’s human nature. Apart from this, health care and insurance concerns also add to the list. What you offer your employees must be comparable to other businesses in your industry."

From PayScale : This week on CSCareerQuestions, a Reddit user reveals an unfortunate situation that sounds almost too much like HBO's Silicon Valley to be true. OP was fired after spending six full years working at a well-known tech company in the Bay Area. Now, our friend reflects on his time there and admits he may have made some mistakes along the way: for instance, automating his job to the point where he forgot how to code. Let's investigate what happened and see what OP can do to salvage his tech career. After graduating college with a computer science degree seven years ago, OP landed a job in the Bay Area doing Quality Assurance work for a tech company. And, being the savvy tech person that he is, OP automated almost all of his tasks after eight months on the job. So with most of the hard part of his job done for him, OP had some free time ... six years' worth, in fact. Let's see how he spent it, in his own words...

Where in the U.S. will you find the most satisfied employees? And what makes them so satisfied in their jobs? For job seekers looking to relocate or launch their career, Glassdoor has released its second annual Employment Satisfaction Report Card by City (2014) , offering a comparison by city of overall employee satisfaction, number of employers hiring, business outlook expectations and more, according to local employees in the 50 largest U.S. metros. Based on local employee feedback shared over the past 12 months, the San Francisco Bay Area takes the lead for the second year in a row, with San Jose, CA ranking #1 (3.5 employment satisfaction rating) and San Francisco, CA taking #2 (3.4). Both cities are home to several companies that won a 2014 Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, honoring the 50 Best Places to Work.

...someone stood up and asked a very interesting question about employees having too much freedom. His basic question (slightly paraphrased) was: “there are a lot of employees that are already screwing around at work and doing nothing when they should be working, why do we want to give them even more freedom?” The question got a lot of laughter from the audience, just imagine it being asked in a heavy English accent with a wee bit of profanity behind it. The answer from SmallBusinessNewz .

From MoneyWatch : Managers, you may rate 10 percent of your people "superior performers," 40 percent as "exceeds expectations," 40 percent as "meets expectations" and the remaining 10 percent as "below expectations." Sound familiar? This breakdown is known as a "stacked ranking" or "forced bell curve ranking." Microsoft (MSFT) was one of the many big companies that used this method to classify how their employees perform. No more. The software maker has declared that approach a failure and scrapped it at precisely the same moment that Yahoo (YHOO) is embracing it... But, what is so bad about stacked rankings?

From Toolkit : The approaching holiday season provides an opportunity to show your employees that you appreciate the contributions they make to the success of your business. While there is some truth to the currently popular quip, "haters gotta hate," and you often can't please everyone, most employees appreciate gestures that you make to show them that they are valued and respected. To be well-received, the gestures of appreciation must be about the employees, not about you and not about the business. This means you must evaluate what the recipient would appreciate by looking at your plans through your employees' eyes. To do this requires that you know your employees and have an appreciation for the stresses and joys of their everyday life. (This pays dividends year-round because taking a few moments to interact personally with your employees is in itself an excellent way to show they are valued.) Many employers opt for a holiday party. However, this is a tradi...

From MoneyWatch : The popularity of workplace wellness programs suggests that more employers than ever believe that healthy employees are more productive. Ivan Misner, founder of networking organization BNI.com, which has over 150,000 members worldwide, believed it and challenged his staffers to a 90-day diet makeover -- what he called "The Misner Plan Challenge." Followers ate fresh, organic produce, small amounts of seafood, and food rich in healthy fats like olives and avocados, while avoiding processed, packaged foods and saturated fats. Here's what he's finding with his healthy experiment.

From the GALLUP Business Journal : Since the financial meltdown of 2008 and the recession that followed, the American workforce has struggled to adapt to an uncertain economic climate. Sluggish growth, persistently high unemployment, and sharp spending cuts by businesses and consumers alike have taken a toll. The Three Types of EmployeesThough the state of the U.S. economy has changed substantially, the state of its workplace has not. According to Gallup's State of the American Workplace: 2010-2012 report , employee engagement levels remain stagnant among U.S. workers. By the end of 2012, as the U.S. inched toward a modest economic recovery, only 30% of American workers were engaged, or involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their workplace. Though this figure matches the all-time high since Gallup began tracking the U.S. working population's engagement levels in 2000, U.S. business leaders shouldn't be patting themselves on the back. An alarming 70% of Am...

Great communication is a key to being a good leader. Communicating with the entire team can be a challenging thing to take on. An article posted in linked in highlights several key areas in which a leader can increase the level of communication with employees at all levels of the organization. The improvement in communication with employees will result in higher employee engagement. This blog post will highlight five key areas any leader can concentrate on to improve his or her ability to communicate more effectively. More HERE .