A few months back, I attended a seminar on “engaging employees”. How can a manager obtain the best from his staff? What will motivate them?

I have written extensively of the need to allow a worker to develop in their own space. Payment and smiles are not the only ingredients towards securing a productive employee.

A new article from the Harvard Business Review asks the question “how to keep your top talent”, especially once you have invested in providing them an expensive training programme. Surely, that should be incentive enough?

Apparently, one of the key mistakes of corporations is to assume that “high flyers” are the happy ones. Not so. And when they leave, it can be painful and expensive. In fact, the cost can be a double whammy. Carnegie estimates that it often takes up to 24 months to replace leading members of staff, which then impacts on work flows and revenue.

There is a flip side to this coin. Part of the fall out of the credit crunch has been a slow move towards appraising older workers. Arguably, the recession was partially caused by the enthusiasm of youth. It is an open question if a wiser and more senior commercial leadership in several countries would have led to a different set of circumstances.

In one of today’s economic newspapers in Israel, there is a major feature on how employers are reconsidering the benefits of utilising 50 year olds and upwards. Not so quick, but they give you  a solid, quality performance, often for slightly more money.

Is that enough motivation for the manager, who does he still just want to look at the direct costs?