Improving Customer and Employee Retention   Are your best customers sneaking out the door with your exiting employees? Most of us are a lot more loyal to the people we do business with than we are to the company that happens to employ them. If a sales person who has seamlessly taken care of you all these years takes a job with his competitor, chances are you will move your business with him. It's a fact. Every time a good employee leaves your company, revenues follow him out the door.   Here are some ways you can take control of the situation:   Employee retention surveys   Imagine if you had a crystal ball and could look into the future. Suppose you saw that in two years' time, 60 percent of your top sales people will be gone. What if anything would you change in your organization today to prevent those top performers from leaving? Well, it's the year 2007 and even with all this great technology, we still don't have a crystal ball that allows us to peer into the future. But we do have other devices at our fingertips that can provide us with an accurate view of the future.   The best way to figure out what is going to happen in your company is to ask your employees. No, I'm not suggesting that you go up to your top sales producers and ask them if they are interviewing with your competitors. But you can certainly ask them what they are thinking and what it will take to keep them engaged in their jobs.   Forward-thinking companies are constantly keeping their fingers on the pulse of the workforce. They are actively surveying their employees every six months to see what improvements can be made to their organizations. They closely analyze trends and make quick adjustments where necessary to prevent good employees from leaving.   Most use outside partners to conduct these surveys. They do so because employees are more candid in their responses. Without employee candor, employers are not in a position to make the necessary changes required to retain employees and that all-important customer base.   Hiring for fit   When someone doesn't work out, we usually hear how this person wasn't a good fit for the job or the organization. The right fit means different things to different companies. Rarely does an organization take the time necessary or invest the resources needed to figure out what the right fit actually looks like for their workplace. Instead, they continue to blame the economy, the hiring manager and sometimes even the parents of the employee. It's easier to fault others than it is to determine what changes must be made to the hiring profile as well as the hiring process.   To determine the right profile, you must look within. Look for those traits that are common among your top performers. Determine what if anything those that have left your company have in common. For example, does the hiring profile for your sales training program include a minimum 3.75 G.P.A.? Would you change this profile if you knew that 90 percent of those people hired with a high G.P.A. have left your firm within the first year to return to graduate school or to pursue more stimulating work?   Building on the future   It seems like just yesterday when we were the new kids on the block. We were the future of America. Somewhere along the way, the torch was passed and a new generation has taken our place. You can keep tossing young people out of your organization because they don't fit your preconceived notions of what workers should look or act like. Or, you can take time to get to know these youthful people and figure out what needs to be done to successfully integrate them into your organization.   These people are the future, and if you don't make them welcome, they will find someone else who will. So why does this matter? Recently the president of a lighting company confided in me that he was concerned because his customer base had changed dramatically. Many of his new customers were in their twenties and thirties. They were more comfortable dealing with their contemporaries than some of his more seasoned sales consultants. The president was smart enough to recognize that for his business to survive, he must continually assess the mix of his workforce. His workplace has to be welcoming to employees of all ages.   The next time you hear someone in your company blame employee retention matters on "a bad batch of hires," or if you see younger employees struggling to fit in, recognize that you have the power to change this. Then pick up the phone and give us a call. With the strong economy and the shift in the workplace demographics, these problems are not going away anytime soon. Can the same be said about your company?     About Roberta Matuson Roberta Matuson is an expert at creating intergenerational harmony at work. She's President of Human Resource Solutions, a firm that provides consulting and training to resolve intergenerational conflicts and help companies capitalize on the unique generational perspectives of their workforce. She has appeared on FOX's "The O'Reilly Factor" and has been quoted in The New York Times, Boston Globe, and many other national business publications.