Retain Talent

Your people drive your business.  They develop and sell your products; they deliver your service; they innovate and adapt and strengthen your brand.  But employee tenure is decreasing.  The average person stays at a job just a few years before moving on.  Meanwhile, seasoned employees prepare for retirement, while loyalty among younger workers seems especially hard to capture.  The war for talent is on. 

Faster, Better, Stronger

In today’s competitive business environment, talent is your only sustainable competitive advantage.  The rapid pace of global innovation and change means that it has become harder and harder to differentiate yourself from your competition on the basis of your products and services.  After all, no matter what you have to offer, it won’t be long before someone comes up with a faster, better, stronger, cheaper alternative.  In this environment, the one key way for organizations to differentiate themselves is people. 

But people are only a competitive advantage if you can retain them.  And talent retention is complicated.  Meeting the changing and divergent expectations of employees across generations has become a growing concern for many employers today.  Competitive companies need to understand what drives an employee’s decision to leave or stay with an organization.

Going, Going, Gone

By the time an employee starts to talk about leaving, it is often too late – they are already halfway out the door.

But what exactly drives that intent to leave?  According to experts, most managers believe employees are “pulled" away by promises of better pay or opportunities.  But the truth is that almost 90 percent of employees feel "pushed" out by factors such as poor management, toxic work environments and dysfunctional cultures.  This disconnect between perception and reality points out the need for better diagnosis of intent to leave.

Plugging the Talent Drain

Several studies have shown that turnover is strongly related to engagement.  One from the Corporate Leadership Council says that improving engagement can reduce turnover by as much as 87 percent!  Our own research shows that engagement is roughly twice as predictive of employees’ intent to leave as job satisfaction alone. So it makes sense to connect the dots – to integrate your engagement and exit tools and strategies to help you understand the real reasons why people leave.  Adding this critical diagnostic step can make retaining talent a whole lot easier.         

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