Are you merely throwing money at your employees in an attempt to satisfy them or are you really meeting their needs? An unsatisfied employee will accept more money as a temporary fix to their unhappiness, but you will have to do more than that if you plan on retaining your superstars.

Don’t know what their needs are? That’s a bad thing. One employee may want the flexibility of working from home one day a week. Another might want the option of choosing his own projects every once and a while, or the opportunity to work with a coworker to learn a new skill. Each person is different, so you will need to spend some time talking with them to discover their needs.

In today’s working environment, your superstar employees realize that they have a choice of where to work. With the rapid entry of Generation Y into the workforce, turnover and job hopping continues to increase. Not meeting their needs is a sure way to alienate them or lose them all together. Knowing and satisfying each of your employees needs will provide a great boost to their overall happiness, and happy employees are better employees!