Do you think it’s tough finding new talent? Try doing it while handling the responsibilities of one of your top performers who recently left your organization. Now try explaining to your top prospect to fill that role that you lost someone you considered a top performer because you don’t do the basics!

Do your employee evaluations on time this year and do them right!

You can let yourself off the hook by believing that all your employees care about is the “money” part of the review. That’s an easy answer, but were you prepared to offer them any concrete feedback on performance? Were you prepared to discuss where they need to focus their development efforts, or was the salary increase/bonus the only specific feedback you had to offer? We keep telling ourselves that people are our most important resource yet when it comes time for a critical interaction with them we avoid preparing for it in any meaningful fashion.