The highly professional firms such as law firm, copyright application, accountant as well as some sectors of services, eg. Luxury restaurants have the same common issues.

They have to train their staff but once they’ve got skills and experiences, they easily leave the original place and open their own business or they eventually get head hunted by big name entities.

 

Inamori understands the concerns of Andy, the president of a copyright law firm.

Reviewing Andy’s story, Inamori mentioned tips to retain skilled staff in your company.

The tips are as follows;

1 Develop clear mission and vision

2 Keep endeavor to convince the staffs

3 Demonstrate the improved performance

4 Be the only one, not the number one

5 Let them go

6 Screen staff

 

Let me explain one by one.

1 Develop the clear mission and vision

In Kyocera, during its starting up stage, Inamori set its mission as “Pursue the fulfillment of employees.”  Then he, together with his people, have worked very hard and pushed themselves to achieve their goals. As a result, all the employees have believed that this company exists to fulfill them mentally and materially. Therefore, people in Kyocera desired to stay at Kyocera and were able to improve their business skills over the growth of the company.

 

Inamori told Andy it’s important for him to develop the noble and sublime corporate mission composed of his words. Andy kept using the corporate mission that his father developed. However, it’s better for Andy to develop by himself and proactively introduce that new one with confidence to his employees.

 

2 Keep endeavor to convince the staffs

Andy said it is really difficult for him to convince staffs with a highly educational background. Those guys tend to behave arrogant and look down upon others. Philosophy looks so fundamental and somehow childish and those elites don’t like so-called “ moral standards”.

 

Inamori said, “I had the same problem with JAL. As it has been Japan’s national carrier, people naturally got arrogant and hardly respected their customers. But JAL’s bankruptcy was rather advantageous for us to penetrate philosophy among employees. All of the employees had no other option but to accept the philosophy I introduced as they had been under the revitalization plan developed and implemented by the government.”

Inamori also said that for most of the top leaders of small to middle size companies, the president has to reiterate how important the philosophy is. Philosophy is the most primitive but extremely important.

 

3 Demonstrate the improved performance

 

Inamori said, ”After JAL’s bankruptcy, although many people looked very much reluctant to conduct the business philosophy, JAL staff gradually started understanding what the philosophy exactly means to them. As they got familiar with the philosophy, the corporate performance started recovering. At first, they looked somehow “forced to be involved in the revitalization project” however, as time passed, they spontaneously started thinking of their own company, and demonstrated cooperative attitudes to me. “

 

Majority of elite staff are very much rational and they would spontaneously accept the results proved by figures and numbers. Therefore, Andy also shared the corporate financial results with his staff and told them the philosophy worked to improve the corporate performance.

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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