It’s fair to say most companies today are challenged with attracting, recruiting, and retaining employees. Leaders like you, rightfully so, are concerned about the effect these challenges have on their businesses.

Concerns about cost, lost customers, company reputation, and employee engagement add up.

Studies are indicating the cost of replacing an employee can range from 50% to 200% of that person’s salary, depending on the level of the position. Typically, this includes costs associated with recruiting, training, and lost productivity.

Consider these statistics:

• 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.
• Companies with a strong onboarding process improved new hire retention by 82%.
• Over 75% of workers say they would be more loyal to their employers if they had flexible work options.

Your best solution? Implement ways to retain your best employees.

Leadership Tip
Tackle your employee retention challenge by making employee engagement a strategic priority.

What actions can you take to ensure your employees are engaged? I offer a few here:

• It starts with effective leadership throughout your organization. You may be effective, but how is the leadership of your direct reports and their direct reports? Do you even know?
• Communication is next. Are you and the leadership team listening, providing constructive feedback, and being transparent, consistent, thorough, positive, respectful, and not overbearing on all issues? How do you know what’s going on?
• Measuring engagement (not satisfaction) can help you identify opportunities for improving employee engagement in your organization. Without formally measuring and then acting on what the measures indicate, you might never become as strong as you could be.

Success today cannot be simply measured by top-line and bottom-line growth. It requires a meaningful way to measure employee engagement. As you know, success with employee engagement equates to continued business success.

In addition to the ideas here, I share the top causes of a disengaged workforce and the drivers of engaged workforce on this episode of The Leadership and Learning Podcast.

My hope for you and your organization is continued success based on creating an environment for fully engaging your best employees. If you don’t, how could you ever achieve the greatness of a high-performance organization?