With the gap between available talent and industry growth widening, higher salaries and other cash incentives aren’t enough to attract and retain employees, said Daniel O’Connor, president of Keepers Inc.

The solution? “Find out what makes a difference to individual employees, and give it to them,” Mr. O’Connor advised. “The goal isn’t to keep people in the company, it’s to keep them thriving.”

Mr. O’Connor spoke to about 75 executives, mostly from Ottawa’s high-tech community, at the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation’s “spot-light” seminar last week.

The challenge, he said, is recognizing that different people have different values.  For example, a young, single employee might stay late and work weekends while older married workers want to have time with their spouses and families.

The first order of business in determining an individual’s priorities, Mr. O’Connor said, is removing the misconception that money is the deciding factor when employees leave.

“Compensation is usually the only thing that is looked at when companies want to keep employees,” he said. “But it’s more than that. Companies must understand what’s going on when people walk out the door.”

In general, people won’t stay in a situation that doesn’t work for them just for the money, he said. Dissatisfied employees might stay because they need to pay a mortgage, but that has a negative impact on productivity. And – mortgage or no mortgage – if they’re not happy, they won’t stay indefinitely.

As part of an impromptu discussion, Mr. O’Connor asked the people at each table to write down the reason for leaving their last job, and show it to their neighbours. Only one wrote money.

Seminar participant Natalie Labrie, sales manager for Les Suites Hotel, said she moved to her new employer because it offered better career opportunities and challenges.

“It wasn’t financial. I had gone as far as I could go where I was,” she said. People like Ms. Labrie fit into the young worker mould – willing to sacrifice lifestyle for career.

This is multiplied in the high-tech field, where some workers operate as “free agents”, roaming the job market in search of the best opportunity, Mr. O’Connor said.

And, there is the ever-present threat of brain-drain to the U.S. It’s a push and pull scenario, he said. The lure of the U.S. will always be there, but it can be dulled. “If you become better at getting people what they need here, they would be less likely to uproot themselves and move to a foreign country.”

Ottawa-based DY 4 Systems, Inc., is one high-tech company that has taken Mr. O’Connor’s advice to heart.  Typically, says DY 4 chief executive Danny Osadca, high-tech companies are so focused on R&D they forget about individual employees.

But after adopting Mr. O’Connor’s methods last year, “our whole leadership style has changed,”  Mr. Osadca said. “Now, we see people are as important as research and development.”

These days, DY 4 managers meet one-to-one with employees for an hour each month. It creates an opportunity for a dialogue around the issues that are most important to each employee’s satisfaction at work.  “The emphasis is on enhancing communication,”  Mr. Osadca said.

The one-hour loss in production time is negligible compared to what might happen if employees become unhappy or disillusioned, he said.  “I don’t see it as a sacrifice.”

But, Mr. Osadca added, DY 4 also changed its hiring process to ensure the people coming into the company have a “better fit”. 

The company not only gauges what prospective employees offer DY 4, but also what DY 4 can offer them.

And, he says, it’s working.  Because “retention is a productivity strategy,”  Mr. Osadca wouldn’t talk about numbers. But, he said, “the rate has improved.”