Today must be HR day for blogs. Tom Peters company asks, “Is your company adequately prepared to meet your company goals and objectives this year?” One point it makes is that while Hiring the Right people is important, retaining and motivating that talent is just as important.

There is a large cost to acquire an employee. Some say as much as 1/3 the salary. So hiring is an expensive proposition. And many companies fail at on-boarding. What is that? That is the process of bring the new employee into your company – everything from training, to first day schedule, to meeting the department, to being ready for the new hire with PC, desk, phone, passwords. Some employees do not get past the bad taste of a mishandled on-boarding. It is the first impression that you give the new hire about how you treat employees.

“Time, money, and effort can be spent hiring the right person, but if the same amount of energy is not put into creating and sustain the right culture, it is like playing a slot machine-you waste a lot of money trying to get a few wins.” [tom peters]

“What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)” [seth godin]

When you treat your employees like clients, your employees will treat your clients like employees. And everyone wins.