超越高薪思维，留住金牌员工

    按照CEO史考特•波斯基的说法，创意设计公司Behance拥有一支“胸怀大志，而不是鼠目寸光”的团队。

    Behance公司为搞创意行业的专业人才提供展示作品的网络平台。员工们都清楚，公司正值快速发展期，需要他们将工作与个人生活融为一体，在非工作时间，依然要花心思去考虑工作上的事。

    波斯基称，Behance不是那种员工可以跑到老板办公室要求加薪的公司，也无法给员工额外支付薪水，或补充人手以便满足业务增长。员工们对此心知肚明。目前，该公司网站的浏览量已达到每月5,000万次左右。

    五年前，波斯基与合伙人共同创立了Behance公司，并担任CEO。他说：“我们当然知道应该尽量多给员工支付薪水。但作为一家小公司，我们只能做到透明管理，一切都是公开的。所有人都知道公司的收入和开支情况。没有人会过来对我说：‘我要求加薪。’”

    尽管美国的失业率长期保持在9.1%的高位，但许多公司都非常清楚员工更迭所带来的一系列挑战和成本开支，因此，它们纷纷提高员工的年薪，以期留住表现最出色的员工。人力资源咨询公司美世（Mercer）近期的一份调查发现，今年，公司为最佳员工涨薪的平均幅度高达4.6%。

    但小公司的薪酬预算颇为紧张，因此要想避免精英人才被更大规模的竞争对手挖走，如果仅仅采取加薪策略，往往只能以失败告终。

    美世咨询公司负责该项调查的凯瑟琳•哈特曼称：“提高员工薪酬会增加公司的固定成本，这对于小公司来说是个不小的挑战。但同样，精英员工的流失对小公司的营收状况产生的影响也更为显著。”

    哈特曼建议，如果公司不能用高薪留住最优秀的员工，管理层应该用更光明的发展前景来打动公司的“明星们”；同时，管理层要与员工开诚布公地交流，讨论如何才能激发员工的积极性；员工希望发展哪些方面的技能以提升自己在就业市场的竞争力等。

    这样的做法无疑会让竞争对手对自己的员工更加垂涎三尺，因此似乎有悖常理。但海蒂•K•加德纳认为，目前有充分的证据表明，如果管理层想要留住出类拔萃的员工，加薪只不过是可供选择的管理杠杆之一。海蒂•K•加德纳是哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）的组织行为学教授，曾负责研究薪酬在企业留住人才方面所发挥的作用，并发表了相关的案例研究。

    她说：“薪酬之所以重要，不仅是因为人们需要获得回报，还因为它是体现公平的一个指标。”

    The team at Scott Belsky's company, Behance, is made up of people he calls "long-term greedy instead of short-term greedy."

    They understand that the fast-growing business, which serves as a web platform for creative professionals to showcase their work, often requires its employees to blend their work and personal lives and to think about work beyond normal business hours.

    Behance staffers also understand, Belsky says, that it's not the type of company where they can walk into the boss's office to demand a raise, and where pay decisions often come down to paying staff more or hiring more people to manage the company's growth, which currently receives around 50 million page views a month.

    "We believe that you should be paying people as much as you can," says Belsky, who co-founded Behance five years ago and serves as CEO. "As a small company, we can have true transparency. Everyone knows what is being made and what is being spent. No one is going to come up and say, 'I want more.'"

    Even though the unemployment rate is at a stubborn 9.1%, many companies, aware of the challenges and costs of replacing employees, are dishing out annual raises to keep their best performers. A recent study by human resources consulting firm Mercer found that on average, companies will increase their best employees' salaries by 4.6% this year.

    But for small businesses with tight salary budgets, using pay to keep top talent from going to larger rivals is often a losing battle.

    "Raises increase your fixed costs, which can be a challenge for smaller companies," says Catherine Hartmann, one of the principals at Mercer who oversaw the study. But "in small businesses in particular, the loss of a top performer has a much more significant impact on the bottom line."

    When a company can't throw cash at its best employees, Hartmann suggests, managers should instead lavish their stars with a promising future and have frank conversations with workers about how to keep them motivated and what skills they would like to develop to make them more valuable in the job market.

    While making employees more desirable to competitors may seem counterintuitive, there is ample evidence that salary is just one part of the toolkit managers need to retain their best and brightest, says Heidi K. Gardner, a professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School who has published case studies examining the effects of pay on retaining employees.

    "Pay matters not just because people need a paycheck, but because pay is a point of perceived fairness," she says.