Hiring is one of the critical tasks for the HR Managers. However, retaining the best employees seems to be even tougher job. No matter which industry you belong to, there will always be your competitors who would offer better compensation and benefits packages and snatch away your best guys. How to deal with this? Sometimes you just have to accept the reality. I can give you some tips and share some of my thoughts that might help you retaining your best ones for longer term. 1. Treating everyone equally is good thing to do but all of your employees are not equal. Some are unproductive, some are average, some are good and some are exceptional. You need to treat them accordingly. Best guys would like to work with the other best guys or at least with the better guys, so you need to make sure your team is not loaded with some below average guys. 2. Best employees usually know that they are the BEST. Companies don't fire them, rather they fire the company (switch to some other company)! They don't like to work 'for' the company, rather 'with' the company. You need to give them that kind of feeling. If you tie them up with the general rules and regulations of the company and make them abide by each and every rules and policies work by work, you might end up loosing them. Bossing around with them or showing them employer vs employee attitude won't bring anything good for you, that's for sure. 3. As Steve Jobs said, there'll always be difference of opinion with your best employees because they can think differently and they are not the average guys who would nod their head all the time and say 'yes' to all of your ideas. So, let them express their opinions and share their ideas. You need to make them feel important and key personnel in your company. 4. In your company, you always need to maintain a list of people whom you don't want to loose. You need to have clear plans for each of them and need to review your plan on every certain period. This kind of retention policy will help you knowing them in a better way and also you'll always be ensured about the core guys that you are building around your Company. You need to recognize them through proper compensation and benefits package so that they always feel that they are getting (more than) what they deserve. M Murshed Haider Professional Speaker and Corporate Coach