Superstar employees — are they worth it?

Organizations tend to bend over backwards to recruit top performers or “superstar” employees. Whether it’s by offering the most attractive salary or backing themselves up with privileges, retaining these employees isn’t usually easy… Or cheap.

The question is, are they worth all that trouble? The short answer: Yes — If you’re a good boss. The Wall Street Journal says that managers who are able to recognize superstar employees and give them work that plays into their strengths and aspirations are key to optimizing value from their talent at every stage.

The value that these employees bring to the company changes over the course of their career. Younger employees tend to focus on their personal achievements — a study measuring patent filings found that young stars produced over double the number of patents early in their careers in comparison to others. These stars’ solo output peaked 20 to 25 years into their career, and began decreasing by about 35% every ten years following.

Older employees start bringing a different kind of value to the company: They grow into pretty good mentors and experts. Their individual achievements don’t obtain the same return, which makes managers think their “best days are behind them,” but in reality they just become more engaged in leadership and mentorship. The study, focused on financial firms, showed that non-stars that were mentored by older stars were rated higher by their managers than those who were not.

The stardom isn’t reflected in their salaries. Another study, looking at a financial firm specifically, showed that young stars were underpaid. They were rated 20% to 30% higher than nonstars by their managers, but were paid the same. This could perhaps mean that the achievement/performance-based compensation wasn’t properly implemented. Meanwhile, as these high-performing employees grew in their career, they were paid an extra average of USD 10k compared to other employees.

Eau no… The Olympic Triathlon has been postponed due to pollution in the Seine. The Olympic men’s individual triathlon, originally set to begin this morning, has been rescheduled to tomorrow due to pollution concerns in the Seine. Representatives of the World Triathlon released a statement lamenting the setback for organizers who have been working hard to clean up the Seine in time for the Olympics.

A little translation: After the great cleanup initiative, “meteorological events beyond [the organization’s] control” — heavy rains from in the last week of July — spiked levels of E. coli and other harmful bacteria in the river, where the athletes planned to compete. This comes after a publicity stunt by the Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who took a dip in the Seine just two weeks ago to prove that the water quality tests had made the long-polluted river safe.

What if they can’t clean it up on time? If the water has not met safety standards by the event time tomorrow, the triathlon will be postponed once again, this time to Friday.