Once upon a time, there was something known as The Talent Shortage. During those heady days of irrational exuberance, companies had plenty of money and they were hiring like mad. At the same time, people leapt from one company to another as fast as you could say “stock option.”

Well, times have changed. The economy has slowed, companies have placed a freeze on hiring and the ranks of the unemployed are swelling.

Given the current economic climate, why would anyone be interested in retaining talent? Well, as things get more competitive, and as everyone hunts around for ways out of the ubiquitous malaise, having smart, enthusiastic, loyal employees may just be what it takes to get you there.

As a staffing firm, we have a unique take on employee retention only because we have to retain two distinct types of employees. On the one hand, like any other business, we have our field staff and on the other hand, we have the talent who work through us. In order to retain our field staff, we do what most companies do — we do careful hiring, we provide extensive training and we maintain a work environment that is both fast paced and fun. In order to retain the people who work through us, we’ve had to be a little more creative.

Turnover among temps or contractors tends to run high in the staffing industry. In fact, staffing agencies need to “hire” (that is, recruit and register) between 4 and 5 people for every one they place. This means that most staffing agencies spend a lot of time and energy recruiting, screening and registering people. A few years back, we decided that if we could reduce turnover, especially among the talent that our clients were most interested in, then this would create a clear distinction between ourselves and our competitors. To that end, we created The Partner Program.

There are several general rules pertaining to talent retention that may be drawn from our experience with the Partner Program.

Lesson 1: Know what you want. You need to have a very clear idea of the skills and qualities that will help people succeed in their work environment and then you have to create a hiring mechanism that will screen for these skills and qualities.

Lesson 2: Give people what they want. When you are a contractor, you are missing at least two things that regular employees have - a good benefits package and someone who is looking out for your well being (like a manager). We provide our partners with both.

Lesson 3: Focus on retention. We wanted to improve retention among our talent so we created a special program that focused on this. If you want to improve retention at your company, you need to create programs and systems that tell your employees that retention is important to you and you need to get their input on just exactly what it is that will get them to stick around.

Whether the economy is up or down, companies succeed because their employees succeed. If you want your company to be the best, then you've got to make sure that your employees are the best. That means you need to have a good idea of what “best” means to you and what “good company” means to them.

As Minister of Enlightenment for Aquent, the world’s largest talent agency for creative, web and tech professionals (www.aquent.com), Matthew Grant speaks and trains on technical and communication issues.