By Phil Harwood

Like many businesses, you have some great people and you don’t want to lose them. Well, today is your lucky day. In this blog post, I’m going to share with you one of the greatest secrets of our time:  how to retain your best people. 

Gallup conducted a massive study of over 1.8 million employees from 82,000 teams in 230 organizations across 49 industries. The results are extremely interesting and lead us to the secret answer we’ve all been looking for. 

The study found that 85% of employees are either not engaged or are actively disengaged at work. Millennials are less engaged than older workers and they are three times more likely to leave their jobs than older workers. 

Let me ask you a question. Why would a high-potential, up-and-coming, energetic young person stay in a job that isn’t engaging to them? Exactly. They won’t. They don’t. Nor should they. Employers must recognize that the secret to retaining people is engagement. Period.  

Are efforts to engage people worth the investment? According to Gallup, organizations in the top quartile of employee engagement have 21% higher profits. How is that possible? Here are the reasons:

• 41% lower absenteeism
• 24% less turnover (in high-turnover organizations)
• 59% less turnover (in low-turnover organizations)
• 28% less shrinkage (loss/theft)
• 70% fewer safety incidents
• 40% fewer defects (quality)
• 10% higher customer ratings
• 17% higher productivity
• 20% higher sales

Gallup research also indicates that managers account for 70% of the variability in team engagement. In other words, the key to solving this engagement issue lies with the managers. Managers must understand that they have the most significant impact on employee engagement and retention. 

What are managers to do differently? Great question. There are six key areas for managers to focus on. Each is explained in detail in Gallup’s Perspective on Building a High-Development Culture Through Your Employee Engagement Strategy. Download this free report here.

How is employee engagement measured? Thankfully, there is a way to easily and accurately measure engagement levels for a company, department, manager, crew, etc. The online assessment is called the Q12. Neal Glatt, Managing Partner of GrowTheBench is certified to administer this assessment and would be pleased to discuss with you how it works and what’s involved. 

Do you really want to retain your best people? The secret is out. It’s all about engagement.

Now go forth.