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With the Carl Icahn proxy fight averted and the Microsoft buyout dead (today, but check back tomorrow), Yahoo! can resume the reorganization it announced last month. It should be easier than most of the previous reorganizations the company went through as this time several top corporate positions are vacant.

(Watch out, though, for the fireworks expected at Friday’s shareholder meeting when almost anything may happen.)

For the past several months, senior managers and top-level executives have been leaving the company in numbers large enough to attract attention from bloggers and tech writers. In June TechCrunch published a list of 114 director and VP level personnel who left Yahoo!, many in 2008. Not long after the site published another story saying Yahoo! could see another 100 senior people leave in three weeks, after options vest worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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For as long as HR has been a separate function from the business, there has always existed a certain tension when it comes to who is primarily responsible for influencing employee retention.

Business management often argues that recruiters are not presenting the right candidates, and in perfect “hiring hindsight” find fault on the basis of candidate education level, character attributes, work experience, technical skills, compensation, etc.

Recruiters are quick to remind management that they present, but do not select, candidates for hire, and that most employees who leave a position do so because of other issues such as training, keep reading…

Ask HR professionals to identify the core of a company’s success and chances are, most will point to the recruiting and selection process. Performed effectively, these two distinct but inseparably connected activities can result in sustainable profit and growth for the organization and all its employees.

I believe a company’s organizational values, its core values, culture, and mutual expectations, are a company’s best recruiting and retention tool.

Mutual Expectations

In relationships of every nature, including partnerships, joint ventures, service contracts and yes, marriage, the incidence of association failure can be traced in large part to the failure of the two parties to clearly understand, appreciate, and agree to mutual expectations upfront.

The employer/employee relationship unquestionably falls into this category. In fact, outside of a family, work relationships represent the greatest number of people involved. Yet few businesses formally establish clearly stated employer/employee mutual expectations!

The key to a company’s success is a reciprocal, balanced level of expectations between the organization and each of its employees.

Time was when the primary social and work contract in this country could be characterized as “show up, be reliable, do your job, and it’s yours until you retire. When that happens, we’ll continue to take care of you.”

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Will flexible employers be the ultimate winners in the war for talent now that gas prices are in the stratosphere? Employers offering transportation subsidies, telecommuting options, and virtual office arrangements may be wooing the best and the brightest candidates right now, even without the highest salaries and biggest relocation budgets in the marketplace.

“It isn’t unusual to find employees driving 50, 75, even 100 miles each way to work and that can cost them $5,000 a year just in gas,” says Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the Telework Coalition, a Washington DC-based organization that supports telework options.

“When telecommuting is an option, it eliminates the geographic recruiting boundaries and increases the pool of prospective candidates. I have heard of specific situations where employers have been able to offer 15% less salary, simply because the employee will no longer need to absorb the daily commute cost.”

Employees who commute 30 miles or more to work are likely to turn-over at higher rates now that gas prices have sky-rocketed, according to Wilsker, and it will only get worse when the job market and the economy rebound. If more firms begin offering telecommuting options to appease employees, the competition for top talent will literally have no boundaries, since proximity to the office will no longer be a major recruiting criterion.

In addition, with no ceiling on gas prices projected anytime soon, Wilsker says that commute costs are starting to concern highly skilled employees, not just hourly workers. In the past, employees making $150,000 to $250,000 might not have considered long commutes when weighing an offer, now they are now thinking about it long and hard before accepting.

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Over the past few years, the term “recruiting” has increasingly become almost automatically appended with “and retention.”

The titles of VP, Director, or Manager of Recruiting & Retention have become pretty common, and many industry commentators clump the two together, almost perfunctorily.

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My friend was released after just 20 days on the job.

She was given work assignments to complete that had never been discussed in the interview. At her exit interview, her manager admitted he had overestimated her technical skills in the interview. She had not professed extensive technical skills in the interview. She was given no notice that she was to be terminated, just asked to come to the conference room at 3 pm on what turned out to be her last day.

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At Herman Miller, 1,300 of the company’s 6,000 employees are water carriers. The designation comes from American Indian tribal life, where the role of the water carrier was vital because carrying water to fellow tribe members sustained life. Water carriers are invited to join an elite group of employees when they reach their 20-year anniversary with the company.

“Water carriers play an important role at Herman Miller,” says Deb Exo, director of talent management. “They carry forward the context of the past that supports the future of the company and they provide insight about the company and mentoring to new employees.”

While having a stable of tenured employees might be newsworthy enough in 2008 employment lore, it’s the furniture pioneer’s ability to sustain those employee retention levels that might be its most notable accomplishment. The company averages 3 percent voluntary turnover per year and reported 9,600 applicants for 738 new positions, according to Fortune’s “Best Places to Work” list for 2008.

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In most organizations the recruiting function is entirely separate from the retention effort, yet the design of the hiring process has a dramatic and direct impact on future turnover. I estimate more than one-third of the factors that drive future turnover have their roots in the recruiting, hiring, and on-boarding process.

Unfortunately, most managers and many recruiters are unaware of this direct relationship and as a result, organizations suffer from unnecessary turnover. If you are a hiring manager, a recruiter, or a retention specialist, it’s important that you understand how the hiring process impacts the likelihood that someone will depart early.

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Decreasing turnover and increasing productivity can be a natty problem. Solutions usually come in one strength: weak. That is, incentive programs, public awards, and social get-togethers generally fail to make a long-term financial impression.

I won’t claim that employee appreciation programs aren’t a nice touch; after all, everyone wants to feel appreciated. But such recognition does not solve the real problem.

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Turnover at one mature organization I have spoken with recently has reached close to 100% for its key engineering talent. This is not because the company is a poor performer or because it doesn’t pay well. In fact, it is doing very well and pays above the average.

The reason they are losing people is because they are well-paid, have made significant income, and have built up large 401(k) accounts. They are leaving because they are successful and able to pursue other interests.

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One of the first things seared in to my psyche upon arrival at recruiter training in the Marines was the term esprit de corps. Having not taken French, I was flummoxed by this oft-used military colloquialism.

Everywhere I turned, someone was all too enthusiastically force-feeding me (and the rest of my platoon) this concept to the extent that even to this day, I find that I have actually incorporated it in to my daily vernacular.

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Few of us really want to work for someone else. Many would rather have the freedom, independence, and potential earning power of the self-employed.

But for reasons of confidence, skill, companionship, security, and convention we work for others. When times are good and jobs are plentiful, we are easily enticed to greener grass. And when times are not-so-good, we hunker down and hope we can stay until those better times return.

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Is your firm experiencing an increasing turnover rate because recruiters from other firms are raiding you?

The first four parts of this column covered all of the elements of a world-class blocking strategy. In this fifth and final installment, we wrap up with miscellaneous blocking tips, as well as a listing of the possible blocking strategy categories.

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Is your firm experiencing an increasing turnover rate because recruiters from other firms are raiding you?

The first three parts of this column introduced the elements of a world-class blocking strategy, including tips to prevent poaching at conferences and events. This week, we look at online blocking techniques, the most effective general blocking approaches, and measuring the effectiveness of implementing these strategies.

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Is your firm experiencing an increasing turnover rate because recruiters from other firms are raiding you?

Part 1 and Part 2 of this column introduced 15 elements of a world-class blocking strategy. This week, read on to learn six new, essential tips for blocking the poaching. In addition, this column will focus on six more tips to prevent poaching at conferences and events, as well as providing insights into some recruiters’ strategies.

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Is your firm experiencing an increasing turnover rate because recruiters from other firms are raiding you?

Last week’s column introduced three elements of a world-class blocking strategy, including analyzing your talent competitors’ immediate needs; engaging third-party recruiters to determine who is most coveted; and working up an agreement with trusted third-party firms to notify you when at-risk employees become more visible.

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Are you currently experiencing, or are you fearful of experiencing, an increasing turnover rate as global competition for talent drives more and more organizations to directly target your employees?

It’s no secret that demand for skilled labor in specific talent pools currently exceeds the available supply of local, and in some cases regional, talent in today’s labor market. This fact is driving organizations to become significantly more aggressive at targeting the talent of weaker organizations. If you want to develop an approach to block the raiding, read on.

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Much of my career has been spent managing, training, and hiring salespeople. In almost every organization, it seems that well-meaning sales managers hinder the hiring process, salespeople actively resist training, and high turnover is the norm.

Nowhere have I seen this trend more exaggerated than in financial services. The sales turnover numbers in this industry stagger the imagination. What is even more amazing is that managers I know in the financial services business tend to accept it as routine.

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Leadership is hard to define. One might say, “I know it when I see it, but I can’t tell you exactly what it is.” We have all probably worked for good leaders ? people who inspired us, excited us, or challenged us. And, we have also all worked for good managers ? people who carefully directed us, followed the process, met the numbers, and always followed through. Both are good. Both are necessary. And rarely do they come combined in a single package.

Recruiting is full of managers. These are the people who run their recruiting organizations efficiently and effectively. They implement processes, cautiously install technology, focus on customer satisfaction, and on staying within their budgets. As long as the world doesn’t change too much, they thrive.

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Hiring people into your organization from the outside is always a crapshoot. You can never be sure if the person is going to really have the skills you think she has, nor can you be certain if she’ll fit the culture of the organization. Yet, for most recruiters it is assumed that somewhere around 90% of all our requisitions will be filled by an external candidate.

This hasn’t changed much, as far as I can tell, over the years. We still operate on the belief that while talented employees have always been hard to find, a well-defined job description, combined with good recruiting, will usually produce an adequate new external hire at a reasonable cost.

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