| RESOURCES
Delicate balance between success and burnout
by Jerry Siebenmark, The Wichita Eagle
As managing partner of Wichita's biggest advertising agency, Sam Williams knows something about trying to keep good workers.
His is a business in which competitors are constantly on the lookout to lure high-performing employees away from his company, Sullivan, Higdon & Sink.
And keeping those employees at the agency is always at the top of Williams' mind.
"As competitive as the environment is getting for people, you have to be aware of this all the time and know it's not something that you can wait for tomorrow to deal with," Williams said.
A new study says that 47 percent of high-performing workers are actively looking for jobs elsewhere.
And one of the reasons they're looking is because they are feeling burned out.
Mark Murphy, chief executive of Leadership IQ, a Washington, D.C.-based leadership training and research firm that did the study, said the loss of a high-performing employee affects a company not only in terms of hiring and training someone new, but also its bottom line.
"When your best people quit, revenue drops, quality suffers and snafus increase," Murphy said. "Even large companies can take a big hit with the departure of just a few key employees."
Overworking the best
The study, results of which were released Sept. 22, surveyed 16,237 employees about work force and retention issues. The surveyed employees were then divided into high (3,896), middle (8,607) and low (3,734) performers based on their annual performance appraisal scores.
Murphy said high performers typically cite job demands as the biggest reason they are looking to move on.
"Over and over we ask our high performers to go above and beyond, making their jobs tough and burning them out at a terrible pace," he said.
Local management experts agreed that high performers can be "victims of their own success."
In addition to good communication, there are other strategies managers and companies can use to retain high-performing employees, said Gerald Graham, R.P. Clinton Distinguished Professor at Wichita State University's Barton School of Business.
One is to distinguish those employees through a company recognition or reward program, a written note or a simple pat on the back.
Another strategy is to set up the employee as an "informal leader."
"Let them exert a little influence with other employees," Graham said. "And the other employees should know (the high performer) has the manager's backing."
But high performers bear some responsibility in saying when the added responsibilities are too much, Link said.
"They need to step up and declare what's working and what's not," he said.
Not all high performers will do that, Graham said. Good team players, he said, will "suffer in silence. They would still perform well and work well with others" until, one day, they announce that they are leaving.
And the only way to know exactly how they are feeling -- and if they are looking for another job -- is if they have a strong, communicative relationship with their mangers.
"You've got to be one-on-one with them, having face-to-face conversations with them," said Williams, the Sullivan, Higdon & Sink executive.
"People are just the most important thing. If you don't have great people you're not going to accomplish anything you want to accomplish."
Portions of this article are copyright 2006, The Wichita Eagle. | 
