It will be a tough year to hang on to talent as everyone's on the hunt for better people, so how can you keep the poachers from your door? Here's 10 real world strategies to protect your headcount from the wolves:

1 Baby on board

What On site childcare for employees
Who's doing it? OCBC
Why it works Childcare is a red button issue. With their kids taken care of staff can concentrate on their jobs and it also sends a strong message that the company cares about family and the employees' other life away from work.

Having a professional care-giver to take care of your employee's children not only keeps them in the office, but keeps their productivity up as well. OCBC which employs close to 10,000 workers, started an in-house childcare centre that caters to employees with children up to the age of six. Sixty children have been enrolled with the childcare centre, with 80% of those being children of OCBC staff. With the launch of its day-care centre in January 2007, Jacinta Low, head of HR planning & employee communications at OCBC Bank says the childcare centre is part of making the company more family-friendly.

Low adds: "As for working mothers, we believe that we are giving them a stronger impetus to return to work after their maternity leave."
"Not only can staff pop in to see their children during lunch time, parents who find themselves stranded without childcare in cases of emergencies can also tap on the emergency day-care service provided by Little Skool-House at-OCBC-Centre," says Low.

"We understand that childcare responsibility is one of the uppermost concerns for our working parents. As a pro-family employer, we strongly believe in helping our employees strike a balance between building rewarding careers at OCBC and nurturing fulfilling family ties," Low explains.

She advises that HR practitioners need to evaluate whether having an on-site childcare service provider would prove beneficial for both employees and employers.

"Childcare service is a specialised type and it is important that comprehensive research be carried out on the shortlisted childcare providers so as to ensure that the quality of teachers, facilities and services meet the organisation's expectations," Low adds.

OCBC staffer, Irene Kwek, says: "I wouldn't be able to continue as a working mum with OCBC, with such ease of mind and the convenience of knowing my children are just in the same building, and in extremely safe and caring hands."

2 Taking off (temporarily)

What Allowing employees to take a break in
their career
Who's doing it? Companies which do a lot of project work and use assembled teams like IT companies and programmers, also educational institutions which just about invented the sabbatical.
Why it works Rather than burning out and leaving the company employees who are permitted to take a career pause can recharge and refocus with the security of knowing they are coming back to pick up where they left off.

With one-third of employees saying they are tired of the rat race, allowing employees the option to take sabbaticals or time-off in their careers may help retain workers in the long-run.

According to a survey by UK company, Direct Line Travel Insurance, one-third of employees surveyed said that they would more likely stay with their employer if they knew that they had opportunities to take sabbatical breaks. In addition to that, 25% of those surveyed said they would be inclined to join a company that provided leeway for sabbaticals.

However, it seems many employers are still resistant to the idea of taking time off work. Out of those who have taken a sabbatical, 60% say that their boss tried to stop them from going.

Chris Price of Direct Line Travel Insurance, said: "Taking an extended break from work used to be the preserve of a privileged few, but now more and more people are taking time out from their careers to travel. It seems firms are recognising this desire and are offering sabbaticals as a way of recruiting and retaining the best staff."

3 Free for all at meal times

What Free meals for staff
Who's doing it? Shangri-La Hotel
and many other hotels
Why it works If your company is in the F&B business, particularly a five star hotel, you can leverage foods already served to treat employees like guests at meal times and this creates a compelling reason to stick around for the free lunch.

The saying "there is no such thing as a free lunch" certainly doesn't apply to employees at Singapore's Shangri-La Hotel, which actively provides its employees with free meals each day.

In the Shangri-La employee cafeteria, My Café, staff can choose from home-cooked foods, including local and international dishes.

Free meals for staff are the norm in the hotel industry, says Eugene Tan, area director of Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore. While its competitors often serve catered food, Shangri-La has gone the extra step of hiring a chef in-house to cook for its staff.

"Universally speaking, the way to one's heart is through one's stomach. Thus, when we work towards fulfilling the basic needs of our staff (like their need for daily nourishment), it sets a basis for commitment to the hotel from our staff," he says.

When asked why the hotel was not asking employees to pay for their food, Tan said that it is the biggest demonstration that the company is fully committed to their well-being.

Tan firmly believes that providing food is only one of the ways to keep its staff. "At Shangri-La Hotel, we work to provide competitive compensation and benefits, and we also take pride in providing staff a career in which they can excel. Our commitment to career enhancement is demonstrated by the fact that each year, most of the company's management positions are filled via internal promotions and transfers."

In addition keeping its attrition rate at 2% compared to the industry's standard of 6%, Tan says that also serves as one of the major pull factors to attract potential employees to the hotel.

4 Training wheels

What Meaningful training
Who's doing it? If you're not you should be worried.
Why it works Training not only skills up staff, it provides a structured path of development and can provide aspirational career signposts. It is a harder decision to leave if your company has trained you up in a customised way to suit a company and a career path.

More than 46% of employees say that they would be more likely to stay with a company that will provide them with training opportunities. However, only 40% say that they would ask their bosses for training opportunities in their job.

According to a study conducted by Learning and Skills Council, it found that employee training, whether it be in a formal classroom or on-the-job, can help in retaining an employee.

Not only would it improve productivity, but 45% of survey respondents say training would make them feel more valued in the company.

5 Sharing the love

What Employee shares
Who's doing it? AXA Life Insurance as well as any other company that has gone IPO.
Why it works Employees who own company shares will be compelled to stick around to see how their share prices play out.

Dishing out shares to employees ensures that AXA Life Insurance's staff are recognised for the importance of their contributions to the company.

AXA Life Insurance and its sister company ipac wealth management have chosen to award its 145 non-sales employees with 50 shares of its parent company, AXA Group.

Under the AXA Miles programme, the company will issue 50 AXA Miles to all its employees who have signed an employment contract with the company on or before 1st April 2007. The company has also built in a retention tool that will convert AXA Miles to shares within two years, with another two year holding period.

Shirley Lee, head of HR, AXA Life Insurance Singapore says allocating shares to all employees, regardless of seniority, has delighted younger employees who appreciate becoming AXA shareholders.

Lee says AXA's attrition rate has been capped within industry norms. "We believe that this bears testament to the holistic HR strategy that we have in place, to ensure that we offer market competitive remuneration, compensation and benefits, and more importantly, a corporate culture where employees are engaged and given opportunities to grow professionally within the AXA family," Lee says.

6 Home sweet office

What A comfortable office environment
Who's doing it? Anyone
who has an office needs to consider this.
Why it works It's pretty straight forward, people think, work and feel better in a clean comfortable and engaging office space where they feel at home. Even the smallest discomfort, if the employee is exposed to it day in, day out, can cause them to rethink their future in the environment.

If you think merely having a convenient office along Shenton Way is good enough to make your employees happy, you might want to think again.

According to a new survey by US-based Blumberg Capital Partners, the office environment, from the temperature of the air-conditioner and the cleanliness of the pantry, can have a significant impact on the general well-being and productivity of employees.

A clean and comfortable work environment can even prevent employees from leaving the company, say 17% of survey respondents who report that they have left a company due to a dislike of the building's conditions or amenities.

The most frequent complaint - cited by 47% of those surveyed was that their offices are too hot or too cold, because of poor heating, air conditioning and ventilating systems.

Nearly one-third of those surveyed complained of unclean or under-stocked rest rooms. Among other gripes cited by office workers were outdated furniture and decor (28%), unexplained odours or foul/unclean air (21%), rodents/insects (20%) and leaky ceilings and windows (21%).

7 Culture club

What Build a positive, creative, inclusive and equitable culture
Who's doing it? Integrated marketing company iris and any company that truly cares about their employees and having a harmonious office.
Why it works If employees feel their input is valued, that they are as important as even the big bosses and that they can influence the culture of their workplace, they are unlikely to jump ship to a new company who's company culture they don't know or understand.

Keeping people in the company is easier than finding them, says Peter Hollins, group chief talent officer of iris worldwide.

Even with the media industry's high turnover rate of 25 to 30%, Hollins attributes its 12 to 15% attrition rate to the company's robust work culture. He describes iris' work culture as one where employees not only feel they can contribute but also one that gets them excited about coming in to work.

Hollins says one way of nurturing that work culture is an open office space where employees are seated equally and without any signs of hierarchy.

In addition to that, the company creates clusters of "squads", which employees join according to their interests, and this aims to enhance the working life of all staff. For instance, iris' London office has a green squad for improving the office infrastructure and a lush squad that handles employees' nights out on the town.

Another aspect of the culture that stands out, and which won't cost you anything at all, is fostering an environment where managers say a simple "thank you". In fact the initiative saw the company identified by UK newspaper The Sunday Times as being best of breed in offering employees thanks.

"Managers saying ‘thank you' to their people is a very simple thing, but it's a very powerful thing. We sometimes don't realise the power of it," Hollins says.

Hollins believes work culture plays a big role in retention because there will always be an agency that is able to offer better pay or a more exciting client to work on. "The relationship that I have with people around me - through their thoughts and actions are demonstrating consistently that they care about me as well as the clients and the other people within the organisation," he says, adding these were the things that brought an employee back to the organisation.

Hollins says having an open work culture saves HR the time spent dealing with frustrating conflicts among staff.

8 Help your employees earn their angel wings

What Involving employees in corporate social responsibility programmes
Who's doing it? TNT and many large global companies.
Why it works Not only does it offer employees a unique experience to get out of the office to do some good, the impact of such schemes can make all staff, whether they join in and get their hands dirty or not, feel good about the company they work for.

Even when a company only involves a few staff in a CSR project, this can have a ripple effect on all staff who can bask in the halo of doing good. This in turn makes people feel proud of the company they work for and makes retention easier.

TNT, as part of the logistics provider's CSR programmes, partnered the World Food Programme (WFP) to send 36 employees to perform volunteer fieldwork in countries like Cambodia. Employees participate in a three-month programme, helping to build wells and other village infrastructure as part of the School Feeding Programmes (SFP).
Wilson Tan, HR director for TNT said even though the programme is open to all employees, stringent criteria and a three month selection programme set by the WFP means that not every employee will qualify to volunteer.

According to Tan, the cost of having to pay 36 employees their salaries for three months, while they are absent, demonstrates the company is committed to its CSR programme. He says even though only 36 out of 160,000 employees participate in the programme, sharing their experiences through blogs, videos and photos creates a significant impact on the larger organisation.

"It has a heart-warming effect on people even though they are not directly involved with the programme," he says.

Tan says the School Feeding Programme is only one part of the company's CSR program. Employees also lend their technical expertise to assist WFP in its logistical and supply chain issues, including transporting food to disaster and emergency areas such as the tsunami-struck Bali.

"What we give to the community is our competencies in supply chain management, logistics, procurement, transportation. Many of those competencies are what we have in our organisation and are easy to tap into. So we call on our people to do what they normally do daily, and that is our key success factor in this programme," Tan says.
Having partnered WFP for the past five years, a global engagement survey found 90% of employees across TNT perceive the company as a socially-responsible organisation, and 80% recognise TNT's partnership with WFP makes the company a more attractive company to work for.

And in this high-growth economic Asian region, CSR makes a difference to employees in maturing Asian markets who are looking at staying with the company in the long-run.

Tan says the result is employees who have a strong sense of community.

"That is what we try to do, in terms of employer branding, where we believe that a large part of what we do is not only to make a profit but to make a difference in society," he says.

9 Need for speed

What Fast tracking career development
Who's doing it? Bayer Schering.
Why it works By identifying the most talented or the most suitable for senior roles, this not only ensures the company has a strong succession plan, but it keeps the most talented and high potential employees on track and in place.

Employees who know their opportunities to grow and develop in the company will be more likely to stay, says Monita Lee, HR director of Bayer Schering.

One of the pharmaceutical company's initiatives to manage talent is a scheme called Significant Progress in Early Executive Development (SPEED) where HR works with different business functions in the regional office to create opportunities for its talent to grow.

Depending on the current needs of the business functions and the skills the talent is lacking , HR creates interesting and meaningful projects for its talent pool. An example of a SPEED project was to involve staff in strategy and marketing support for a new drug launch.
Lee says employees need to know whether there is an opportunity to grow in the company.

"As an employee, I want to know that if I perform well, my company will recognise that and I would have future opportunities to grow in the company," she says.

Lee says SPEED sends a strong message to high performers and potential talent that the company is willing to invest in people development. She says SPEED is a more proactive approach of creating opportunities for its employees to grow, as opposed to other companies which try to match talent with existing requests and needs of the business functions.

What about keeping the employees who are not selected for the SPEED programme? Employees are reminded that SPEED is an ad-hoc project and has no set quota, with talent reviewed each year.

With the high growth rate of Bayer Schering in the China market, Lee says it is important the company does not ignore talent in its established markets, and utilises the growth in China to build the talent pipeline.

She says it is important for the company to identify talent, especially those ready to take on a regional or international role, so they can be developed in that direction. This strategy allows Bayer Schering to develop its Asian pipeline and to keep employees on the move rather than stagnating.

10 Flexing flex-time muscles

What Flex-time
Who's doing it? Fuji Xerox.
Why it works Allowing flexible working hours not only allows employees to balance their work and home lives, it's also a strong signal that you trust them to get their work done at alternative hours or offsite.

For companies that have a large number of working parents, allowing employees to work flex-time helps in the retention of staff - even in the face of higher monetary rewards from a potential competitor.
According to Lee Soon Kim, director of organisation and resource development of Fuji Xerox, allowing employees to choose to work from home for half a day has pegged the company's attrition within 12%, which is lower than the industry standard.

Employees at Fuji Xerox can also choose to move their start time forward half an hour earlier or later than the slated usual working hours.

With two-thirds of their 600 staff having families, working parents who feel the need to be with their children during the examination periods often opt to work from home. Lee says in the past three years the company has been running this programme, employees and line managers have developed an understanding that employees can only take flex-time by "mutual agreement".

Lee says the scheme has worked so well employees have actually turned down offers to go to other companies because they know they would not have the same amount of work-life balance they do now.