We see it very often; a person applies for a job, gets trained up and then leaves. That is fine for the employee but not so good for the employer who has covered the cost of training and watched the investment in terms of experience and institutional knowledge walk out the door, often to a competitor.

Let's look at the origins of the problems that arise when a key member of a business' personnel departs.

Was the person really the best candidate who applied when the position was advertised?

Why was he or she hired?

Was the recruitment process as professional and thorough as is should have been?

One way for a business to retain key personnel is to offer high quality terms and conditions with salary and benefits. Happy people generally do not leave. Or so they say. Quite often assumptions are made in the recruiting process. Were there checks carried out on the stability of the potential employee? Did a professional advisory service like Genos International conduct testing to establish the level of the applicant's emotional stability or intelligence, to determine whether he or she was prone to avoiding stressful situations in a workplace?

Or was the applicant only looking for a temporary job while he or she looked for something better?

Was the applicant only seeking paid training to go on to establishing their own similar business in order to compete with the employer?

In some cases, testing and evaluation would have picked up personality traits that would have made the applicant unsuitable. In many situations human resource people, armed with a psych evaluation would have recommended against taking on an applicant and enabled the business to look to other candidates who in hindsight, were better suited to the job.

Sure people leave a job for personal and family reasons and that is a normal event for a business to cope with. Where possible though, it is better to spend more time and resources in the recruitment phase to ensure that the truly best candidate is employed. Best does not always equal best qualified. Best can mean most suitable in terms of personality and resilience.