Why does a headhunter need to know about long-term employee retention and how to prevent employee turnover? Why do we read the latest research? Because knowing what causes people to leave their job, and what causes people to accept a new job is our stock-in-trade. That's what we do all day, every day. Executive search firms make a living replacing underperforming employees with top performers recruited from other organizations.

This is a preview of a article written and published for ASAE, in collaboration with Jackie Eder-Van Hook and Mary Logan. You can read the full post here (paywall).

Replacing an underperforming executive is one of the most challenging situations that a nonprofit leader must confront.

If you work in an association or other nonprofit organization, it’s risky to think of recruiting as an HR function. It’s not.

By telling HR to “Post a job ad, get some resumes, and then I’ll starting interviewing,” you are making a career-limiting mistake, one that puts your personal reputation at risk.

HR professionals often treat recruiting separately from employee engagement and retention, but recruiting and retention are two sides of the same coin, with the same basic ingredients. The right recruiting practices can also "bake in" long term employee engagement and retention.

Imagine if a vengeful IRS agent could levy three hefty new taxes against you -- taxes that apply only to your organization. You would mobilize everything you had to fight it. But a handful of toxic managers in your organization do this every day. The "toxic manager tax" has the same effect as polluter fines or carbon emissions tax -- money off the bottom line.

A few years ago, the caliber of your management team was not a public matter. Your internal disagreements stayed private. Outsiders rarely knew whether or not you had few bad apples on your leadership team.

As the boss, you can’t possibly keep track of all of the knowledge necessary to run your organization — your head would explode. (Even micromanagers have to trust people to some degree.)

Senior executives often call me when they are at their wits end with people on their team:

Salary negotiations with top performers are a pivotal time in the hiring process. As an employer, it’s easy to forget that the candidate is not yet one of your employees. You can create or destroy trust, and set the tone for your entire employment relationship by how skillfully you negotiate salary. Sadly, salary negotiations are also where hiring managers risk snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Job seekers now have access to credible salary information, so you need to assume they know the market for their skills as well, or better than the hiring manager.