Marina Maher President Marina Maher Communications

Tom Coyne President Coyne PR

Timothy M. Gardner Associate Professor of Management Owen Graduate School of Business Vanderbilt University

Deborah Levy VP of Talent Recruitment Manning Selvage & Lee

Ken Jacobs Principal Jacobs Communications Consulting

Michael Lasky Davis & Gilbert

So how are the most successful agencies coping with this threat? What managerial—and legal steps—can you take to protect your agency's greatest asset from competitors? What are the procedures and systems that successful agencies use to retain the best in the business? How do the great agencies keep their outstanding performers year in and year out? We asked your peers for their answers to these and other pressing questions—and finally broke the silence surrounding this touchy topic. Here's their advice:

1. Take the blinders off—analyze retention rates. "Poaching happens every day. From entry to senior levels, staff gets called by recruiters and HR people at other agencies every day," says Tom Coyne, president, Coyne PR. "There's a real shortage of talent in PR. There is a lot of churn, and it's driven by a confluence of things, including: a 'grass is greener' mentality, high levels of burnout because it's 24/7 and agencies thinking they can create an instant culture by taking people from other shops."

"National surveys from a variety of sources suggest that forty to eighty percent of people that change jobs without an intervening spell of unemployment did no job search prior to making the move. A big portion of these were the result of poaching," says Timothy M. Gardner, associate professor of Management (Organization Studies) at the Owen Graduate School of Business at Vanderbilt University, who is currently working on a research study on poaching and teaches an MBA elective class on the practice and ethics of lateral hiring.

Once you recognize this reality, believes Coyne, "You can work toward keeping your best people by focusing on retention rates. My retention rate, for example, is 92 percent. And over ten years, I've lost less than ten people to other agencies. In fact, if someone gets an offer, I always say 'Listen to it and take it if it's good.' Why? Because I believe we have built a culture where people feel valued here and I'm not afraid to lose those who don't fit into it."

2. Begin at the beginning—start by hiring the right people. Deborah Levy, vice president of talent recruitment at Manning Selvage & Lee, agrees with Coyne's insistence on ensuring a cultural fit with hires: "A part of the hiring process—and one that allows agencies to differentiate themselves and engage the best possible talent—is to match their business needs."

In other words: Your best defense against poachers is making sure you have the right people on board when you first hire them. "We are really attuned to hiring people who are the right cultural fit," elaborates Maher. "Even the smartest person will never work out if it's not a good cultural fit. So, keeping the best talent starts with hiring the best talent—both experienced and entry level hires. We always look to hire smart talent, diverse skill sets and those with the greatest potential—not the person doing the job next door."

Agencies never get to poach the very best talent, not if you're taking care of them," according to Coyne.

3. Recognize non-traditional threats—poaching often comes from the client side. "PR people often get offered jobs from clients—it happens a lot," says Coyne. "While there's not a lot you can do about that, it's worth being aware of. In addition, I recommend an 'attitude of gratitude' if this happens to you. All it has done is grow my business, because I've treated them right and helped them grow their career. Now that they're on the inside at a client company, business often comes back."

4. Career path employees—give them a stake in your shared futures. So how do you ensure you're "taking care" of your best and brightest, as Coyne puts it? "The answer is to think career paths—show your employees the next step so they don't have to go wandering to find it. Start with your reviews process. Don't just review against their current job title—build in goals that work against any of their weaknesses to get them to the next level. Include goals for advancement training and show how those items fit into the next job up," he says.

"Train them and pay them to be trained. In my case, I make vice presidents. That's what I do at my firm," Coyne says. "I don't care if they end up vice presidents here or elsewhere—I want my people to know I'm growing their careers."

5. Evaluate your agency culture against common factors for high retention. "A great employer relationship is like a happy marriage," continues Coyne. "If you're dedicated to the person the other end and you do certain things every day to show that, that's the bond that will keep the person there when others knock."

Ken Jacobs, principal at Jacobs Communications Consulting, a firm that helps agencies with staff performance and retention, agrees: "In my view, keeping staff from being poached is about keeping them happy." He thinks this is driven by the following seven critical factors:

• Management that listens (e.g., surveys, one-on-one meetings, suggestion boxes)
• Regular communications and feedback (e.g., reviews, thank you notes, good news alerts)
• Involved staff (e.g., employees working on the business, not just in it)
• Competitive compensation (incl. benefits tailored to generational preferences)
• Clear agency vision (e.g., leadership, vision and values employees can buy into)
• Training (i.e., millennials expect it as a point of entry)
• Workplace fun (i.e., teamwork and friendship builds community and stems poaching)

Levy agrees: "Listening to what your employees need and want is key," she says. "What do they think they need to continue growing and learning and how can we deliver it to them? What are their greatest interests and areas of expertise? Always offering employees a wealth of opportunities to grow as professionals in an environment that supports this growth will give them little reason to pursue jobs at another agency."

6. Build a protective legal matrix. "In today's competitive business environment, it's more imperative to make sure you're proactive. That includes speaking with counsel and understanding the key concepts that can work together in a sort of legal defensive matrix," says Michael Lasky, Davis & Gilbert. These can include:

• Non-competition agreements. These are designed to prevent a departing employee from working for a competitor or in a competitive business for a period of time after he or she departs from the company. It is an industry-based restriction and represents a rather tight set of "handcuffs," Lasky reports.
• Customer- or client-based restrictions (restrictive covenants). These are provisions that restrict the departing executive, for a period of time, from servicing customers or clients that he or she personally rendered services to during the period of employment, according to Lasky.
• Non-raiding provisions. These prohibit the departing employee from hiring or assisting in hiring another employee of the former employer. The goal is to prevent compounding the harm that the departure of a subsequent employee or worse yet, a group of co-workers, might cause to a company.
• Benefit forfeitures and protections. Many companies are updating their long-term incentive or stock-option plans to include forfeitures in the event the former employee violates some requirement of the original contract of employment or a severance agreement executed in connection with the employee's departure, Lasky offers.

7. If all else fails, let go—poached stars often underperform. "Competing agencies practice what we call 'pounding the wound' to poach talent. They'll find out what bothers prospects about their current jobs, and then continually emphasize those problems and how they don't exist at the new firm," Gardner says. "But for that to happen, they have to first be talking to employees who aren't happy where they are." His point: "If it's not a great fit, they'll be looking anyway. That's when competitors move in."

The good news in all this for agencies is this: "The best research suggests that stars dramatically underperform once they leave their home firm," Gardner says. "People are productive due to their teams, co-workers and organizational contexts. So, while it's a hit to lose a good employee, chances are the new company will have overpaid for their services."

Brian Pittman