Calculating retention is easy. If you have 100 employees start work this month, and 10 of them leave before the end of that month, your retention rate is 90 percent. The retention-rate formula is:

Our company is being sold, and while the new management takes over, I have been asked to figure out an effective strategy to keep the best employees from leaving amid the upheaval. Internally, we have mulled making improvements to our compensation/benefits packages. Although this should help to some degree, I’m not convinced it aids our larger goal of inspiring these people to stay focused and motivated (especially since their colleagues will be leaving). I know there is no single surefire answer for situations like this, but which strategies might be helpful in improving the retention odds?

You’ve already done the right thing in identifying your “best employees”—those who will make the strongest contribution to success in the short to medium term. Ensure that your criteria for selecting these top performers are transparent and commercially sound.

Next, communicate clearly to let them know that they are important. Establish an engagement plan for each individual. For example, some of our clients commission us to interview each “high-value” employee confidentially about how long they intend to stay, what they want from the next few months, factors that might make them want to leave and factors that would make them stay, and how they’d prefer to share their knowledge with others.

Employees are handed the resulting “personal engagement plan” to discuss with their managers. You can do this internally or, for a bigger “brag factor” and more frank responses, hire an external provider.

Personalized engagement plans should include: learning and development preferences, knowledge-transfer options, changes in manager practices to encourage higher performance, and so on.

These are the people whose performance warrants access to external coaches, internal mentors and other signals that their contributions are highly valued.

Embark on other more visible changes, such as creating a working group in which all or some of your best employees work with the CEO (presuming he has earned their respect) on initiatives or problem-solving during the merger.

Ensure departures are celebrated, followed by “storming, norming and reforming” events for those left behind.

If a person has a future with your organization, tell him or her now—and reinforce the message many times, in as many different ways as possible, to assuage any concerns about job security.

On the other hand, be frank with individuals who don’t appear to have a professional future with your organization. Provide these people with financial rewards based on clearly defined performance expectations, as a way of retaining them until the time comes when they are to be let go. The amount of money you give them should result from a cost-benefit analysis relating to the value of their institutional or professional knowledge.

The key, however, is not to rely on financial rewards alone. Every employer’s money is the same color, and real talent can easily choose to walk away. But almost everyone responds favorably when they believe that the work they do is both important and valued.

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What challenges/resistance should I expect as our organization begins examining workforce diversity? Conversely, how can we also illustrate the potential benefits to people who may be skeptical that this effort is “just another program” being imposed on them by HRM?

—Angling for an Angle, education, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

You should expect challenges from those who don’t see themselves as part of “diversity.” This will happen if you cast diversity primarily in terms of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Instead, to prove that you’re serious about workforce diversity, and not political correctness, include equal emphasis on a realistic variety of diversity dimensions, such as age, marital and parental status, education, personality type, communication style, the four previously mentioned dimensions, and others. Emphasize—and mean it—that everyone is part of the diverse workforce.

There will be resistance if the amount of time devoted to training, education and other diversity interventions is seen as taking away from what some will refer to as “real work,” especially if allowances aren’t made for time away from the job. Telling someone he has to take a day to attend diversity training, but that there won’t be any slack on that project deadline, is a good way to breed resentment toward the entire effort.

The best defense against resistance to an examination of diversity is education, but not limited to the classroom variety. Leaders throughout the company, not just in HR, must help everyone in the workforce grasp this concept: If Company A has developed systems, procedures, policies and a culture that allow men and women from a variety of backgrounds to contribute productively, and Company B’s systems, etc., seem to work only for certain types of people, Company A is going to perform better.

Changing an organization to adapt to a more diverse workforce requires changing culture, systems, behaviors and more. This takes time. And it takes realistic expectations.

Nothing converts skeptics like success. Demonstrating strong performance while building an organization that manages a diverse workforce helps convince the doubters and cynics that managing diversity, which we could simply call “managing reality,” is a smart business strategy.

SOURCE: Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette, co-authors, Contented Cows MOOve Faster, March 19, 2008.

LEARN MORE: Learn how Denny’s used diversity efforts to overcome an image of corporate racism. Also: a counterpoint suggesting that diversity programs don’t measure up to the hullabaloo that surrounds them.

How do we teach our supervisors to write more effective performance reviews? As we’ve discovered, this task is not as simple as it seems. New supervisors especially struggle with the chore, making them less likely to view the process as important in getting the most from employees. How could we confront—and surmount—this challenge?

This issue is more often about the system rather than the actual supervisors. If the organization has done its part to create a workable, efficient performance management system and culture of accountability, then it’s easier for the supervisors to do their job.

Here are six things you can do to create a system that sets up supervisors for success in the performance review process.

1. Secure ownership by senior leaders

Senior leaders need to consistently promote performance management as critical to achieving business results. Identify role models at the top who visibly use the system. Actively involve senior leaders in communications about performance management. This gives supervisors “permission” to provide candid feedback.

2. Tie individual goals to business strategy

Try goal-setting from the top of the organization on down. If your supervisors’ goals are linked to strategy, it will be easier to link all employees’ goals. The clearer the link, the easier it is to discuss results (or lack thereof).

3. Hold individuals accountable for living the organization’s values

Strategy helps prioritize what work must get done. Organizational values guide how the work should be accomplished. When values are built into the review process, supervisors can more easily address destructive “results at all costs” behavior.

4. Encourage employees to take responsibility for their own career management

An effective system should create a partnership between employees and supervisors focused on mutual success. Sure, employees need guidance and coaching from their supervisors. But to stay motivated and committed, employees need the chance to tap into their personal motivators and have a say in how their unique capabilities can be leveraged.

5. Hold supervisors accountable for providing regular feedback

Consider tracking and compensating them for conducting regular coaching discussions. Hold them accountable both for results and for developing their teams. Don’t train them in conducting performance appraisals. Provide the skills and tools they need for the discussions you want them to have throughout the year.

6. Stop changing those forms or screens

The critical ingredients of an effective performance management system are the business and cultural drivers, and the conversations that take place between the people who need to execute the organization’s strategy. In the end, performance management needs to be less about forms or online systems, and more about continuous dialogue and partnership around issues that matter most to employees and the organization.

When supervisors focus on performance and mutual goals year round, the performance review is a much easier conversation.