59% of HR professionals feel that retaining and rewarding the best employees is going to be the biggest challenge faced by human resources over the next ten years, according to research from the Society of Human Resource Management. This is because there aren’t enough workers around with the skills to meet the demand. As a result of this skills gap, it is becoming increasingly competitive to source the right talent. Therefore, retaining talented professionals is a top priority for any competitive business.

Here are three main methods which HR professionals have cited as the most effective ways to source, retain and reward talent, and how small businesses could go about implementing them.

• Provide flexible work arrangements and remote working opportunities.

The growth of technology has enabled businesses to provide flexible and remote working arrangements for their employees. Remote working and flexible hours mean that businesses have a wider talent pool as they are able to source staff worldwide.

Small businesses can: employ software help to manage remote workers. For example, project management software, such as Wrike, can be used to assign and manage work tasks online. Time tracking software, such as Hubstaff, can be used to time how many hours an employee has worked by recording the time and taking periodic screenshots of the work being done. Don’t allow remote working to detract from collaborative efforts in the office. Put video messaging software, such as Skype, to use.

• Create a culture of open communication and trust.

Small businesses benefit from being able to create a trusting and tight-knit team much more easily than large corporations. A culture of open communication is essential.

Small businesses can: begin by calling brief but frequent progress meetings where the whole team can report on how their work is going. This keeps everyone on the same page. Missing memos scribbled onto post-it notes can cause tensions in organisations and a great way to get around this is to use voice recording software like Evernote, which can send audio memos to colleague’s email inbox, phone or other device.

• Incentivise employees with strong total reward packages.

Another aspect to consider is benefits packages, which includes everything from wages and holiday time to insurance and performance based perks. As a small business, it can be a challenge to keep track of sick leave, holiday time and performance.

Small businesses can: automatically track how many sicks days and holiday days an employee has, as well as plan staff leave, through OneTouchTeam, an online staff holiday management system. You can also use the software to make notes on employee performance or achievements by date, which can help to organise your performance based rewards.

Retaining and rewarding top talent is a challenge for even the biggest businesses, so it's vital that smaller businesses have a sound strategy in place if they want to remain competitive.

Author Bio: Stuart Hearn has 20 years experience in the HR sector. He co-founded plusHR, a leading UK HR consultancy, and previously worked as International HR Director for Sony Music Publishing. Stuart is currently CEO of OneTouchTeam, an online staff leave planner and HR system for small businesses.