Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on talent — finding it and keeping it — featuring Claudia Salvischiani, an expert on all things HR. From workforce trends and interview techniques to structuring incentives and performance evaluations, Salvischiani gives candid advice and insights on how to attract and retain the best people to help your business thrive.

It takes people to run a business, and the better they are, the better your business. So what can you do to not just get, but also keep, the very best? Claudia Salvischiani has a lot of strong opinions on how to do just that, grounded in real-world experience helping companies across India and Africa for over 25 years. 

Salvischiani believes that leaders play an essential role in keeping people happy. “When people leave, they are actually leaving their boss, not their organization,” she explains. “Your task as a leader is to develop people. Leaders are the ones who give meaning to your work. They explain to you why things happen.”

Top Seven Masterclass Takeaways 

1. Create a sense of community, especially with remote workers. Salvischiani believes that having a sense of belonging is especially important for remote workers. Organizations need to change and she recommends communicating a lot and not just one-on-one. 
2. To find the best candidate, you need to prepare. “Be very systematic about what you're looking for in all aspects,” she advises. It’s extremely important to have the right profile for the position before you start sorting through resumes or else you’ll waste everyone’s time.
3. When interviewing, don't let the candidate speak too much. “At the beginning, you speak, you set the tone, you set the structure, you explain how it's gonna be,” Salvischiani recommends. “You steer the interview, so you're not steered by the candidates.”
4. Be honest when hiring. Salvischiani suggests being extremely honest about the context the person is going to be working in. Recruiting is a selling process, but you still have to be very clear about the challenges ahead.
5. Higher salaries don’t earn you higher loyalty. While compensation is key, “you are not keeping people with the money. You're just postponing their leaving,” Salvischiani says. And she believes creating a salary structure is “absolutely necessary” for transparency, equity, and morale.
6. Don’t incentivize individual performance. Incentivizing organizational performance over individual performance gets the entire department or organization to collaborate and intervene if others don’t perform. 
7. Give feedback honestly and frequently. Even though it’s one of the hardest things for managers and leaders to do, giving frequent feedback, even if it’s bad news, is essential. People actually feel valued when you give them feedback. According to Salvischiani, quick quarterly check-ins help with retention. 

Listen to Salvischiani’s recommendations and strategies for acquiring and retaining talent. It’s a delicate balance of understanding what you need as an employer and what your employee needs to develop and grow.

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