What is the best way to retain the manager level employees in a small organization?

Hello,
Great question! I went from a large firm to a small business and became the manager quickly. I ran and managed the entire office and that is how my experience relates.

There are multiple ways to keep the manager enticed to stay in your organization. Here are a few ideas that have worked, could work, and other ideas that I have heard.

1. Pay - of course providing a higher pay to the manager to retain them. This shows that they are valued to the growth of the company. You are investing in the manager as a key piece to keep the company growing.

2. Providing Education - Paying for classes to help this certain employee grow personally. Ideally, paying for the classes to help this employee grow professionally will help both your company and your employees growth.

3. Retirement - provide a retirement account for the employee if you do not have one yet.

4. Student Loans - help by paying for part of their student loans. Obviously this relates to pay but this is a different way that can keep the employee enticed to stay.

5. Delegate - if they are that good and qualified to keep, allow them for responsibility/freedom to incorporate their ideas so they feel the value they are bringing to the company.

This is just a few example but I hope these help and if you want more ideas, please reach out. good luck!

What is Manager ? A person who likes (or used to) to assign, control, supervise, investigate, sits in meetings, etc. I have this experience in big international companies, managers spend most of the time with internal issues - human resources, inter-departmental ones, processes & procedures, reporting to higher levels, preparations for exhibitions, speeches, and so on.
In small organization, that energy, knowledge, time, vigor, can be utilized by use those, directing to the market mostly. Human resource issues will be much less; inter-departmental issues will be transformed to fight with competition; reporting and meetings will be transferred to marketing research and approaches.
And also in big companies, people stay if not anonymous behind the big brand, at least in shadow. In small companies, the name of the person is more visible on the market. I mean for example " GE Corporation gets 20 % market share under management of Mr. John - to - Mr. John's Company gets 20 % market share".
all the best
Val

Great question. Successful managers want to share in the success of the business. Two ways to help keep them are offering a quarterly profit sharing program and a stock ownership plan that vests over time.

The details hide the opportunities.
1. Does the company allow you to issue share options, or shares? Good way is to have an employee share scheme.
2. Do you have a business or product that is interesting for the positions?
3. Does your company associate with strong culture and values?
4. You need to pay them a salary that fits the market. Good to associate good performance with salary increase and bonuses, so they can grow within their performance. This point is the same for all positions.

If going for great salaries is something you cannot afford at the current stage, try to make sure they are paid at least enough so they can cover at least their living costs, be open to how money is spent within the company, so they can see that it is fairly spread. Go for performance incentives (% of profit, etc.), higher future gains (shares/options that will value a lot more in the future). This way you will also be sure that whoever works for you, believes in you or/and in your idea/product/business. And they will invest the difference for a much bigger profit in the future.

All excellent answers above. Another option are the golden handcuffs.... retention bonuses and offering ownership over a period of time.