We set out in the beginning of this book to make the case that a motivated, stable, and engaged workforce is essential to the long-term success for your organization—and that an energized workforce is your most important sustainable competitive advantage. It’s a business strategy that, to get traction, needs to leverage the strengths of your HR team, enlist operations management, and gain some level of senior management’s endorsement. And this means that, in order to sell it and sustain it, you need data to build the case for support, funding to keep the initiatives moving, and mindshare coupled with commitment from those who are required to execute the actions you have planned.

Much of the data you need likely exists. You probably track turnover data already. You may not have attrition information by individual leader, but that is usually obtainable. You should know the cost of losing a valued contributor, as we discussed in Chapter 1. You may also already have in hand many of the relevant key business metrics that are well established and often reported to track performance in your organization.

But this isn’t the whole picture. The missing pieces are best obtained through the voice of the employee. In 2018, 73% of companies in the United States administered some form of an employee survey. That’s the good news. But there is a glaring problem. A majority of those organizations fail to take meaningful action with the results. Many well-intended employers simply don’t have the talent management expertise to turn employee survey data into workable strategies and tactics that can boost business results and contribute to long-term success. In most cases, the problem is that those in the know are not properly demonstrating the metrics that matter to organizational success. This is where it all begins—with the knowledge of the metrics that matter.

Examples of Metrics That Matter

66% of all 887 organizations that participated in the most recent Workplace America study were able to raise customer satisfaction as a result of their engagement and retention initiatives.

Links between customer satisfaction and increased sales are well established.

100% of this year’s best-in-class organizations track links between on-the-job safety and employee engagement and satisfaction.

55% of all United States organizations link engagement to performance. Those that do make this link see a tremendous competitive advantage.

The real value in linking key performance indicators like these to employee engagement, and determining where the largest gains are, is to determine where best to invest limited resources to get the biggest payoff. See Figure 8.1 for the top performance metrics impacted by higher engagement and retention.

Where’s the Money?

For as long as we have been working in this sphere, it has always shocked us how resources, particularly in light of the known impact an engaged and stable workforce can have on performance and profitability, are so hard to build into established budgets. Across the American workplace, employee engagement budgets have fallen for four straight years. In 2014, 71% of all employers carved out some level of funding for employee engagement. By 2018, it was down to 54%. Are executives and finance chiefs saying that customer service, safety, sales, culture, and profitability are less important than they used to be?

The best-in-class organizations all dedicate some of the highest percentages of their labor and operations budgets to engagement strategies. One approach we have long advocated is to move a number of essential employee initiatives (e.g., onboarding, wellness programs, benefits, incentives, training, leadership development) under an “Engagement” budget category for the sole purpose of bringing attention to the importance of this key aspect of talent management.

Finding the Money

Over the course of this book, we have provided the data, insights, and tactics that will help you turn these bigger ideas into action. As we make our final kick to the finish line, we provide a series of strategies that will help you fund your engagement and retention initiatives and help ensure the greatest level of success. We begin with the funding:

• 1. Work from data and build your case.
• Here, you will want to focus on relevant and accepted metrics that link engagement/retention to business results. It also helps to gather new metrics wherever helpful. Be sure to use current sources of data such as retention statistics.
• 2. Establish or build budget categories for engagement and retention.
• We advise this approach because you may find that one strategy will be easier to fund than another. Be thoughtful about where this budget resides in your business unit and who controls the funds (HR? Operations? Training?).
• Next, move existing funded activities into this bucket to create the understanding that you are already doing some things that contribute to keeping and motivating people. Include everything we have covered in this book, such as onboarding activities, employee communications channels, employee-appreciation activities, volunteer and community service programs, fitness facilities, employee surveys, service awards, and so on. The purpose of this step is to establish the mindset that this initiative is important.
• 3. Recruit and foster internal partners and advocates.
• As with any major initiative, recruiting thought leaders in various parts of the business to serve as your advocates and supporters is the first step. Find leaders who believe in your mission, have influence, and will support you in getting resources and funding. Their ability to help you gain that funding is invaluable, but they can also help you during the execution phase as well.

Spreading the Impact

Next, let’s look at how you can lay the groundwork for the most successful engagement and retention initiative possible.

• 1. Start where you will succeed.
• With so many moving parts and people contributing opinions, start your new initiative or tactic with a manageable business unit that has a strong and supportive leader who has demonstrated an ability to embrace and execute a new program or process. It’s always tempting to start with the worst retention department in your organization, but don’t be lured into this common trap. Your goal should be to start where you have the highest probability of success, where you can demonstrate positive results. Then later, after you have launched and implemented the process with the friendlier group, you can go after the more challenging ones.
• 2. Brand it and promote it.
• Branding an initiative gives it what marketers like to describe as “legs.” That means it has the potential to expand and grow into new areas. You likely do this now with other major projects or launches. It’s a well-known way to use a single phrase, term, or label to communicate the breadth, depth, values, and goals of the effort.
• 3. Stick to it and sustain execution.
• It goes without saying that nothing ever reaches a positive conclusion without follow-through. In this case, the message is to hold people accountable for whatever you ask them to do. Check in regularly. Schedule regular, brief chats with key people. Track and report activities. Like any important effort, it takes time for these strategies to take hold and demonstrate their impact. The name of the game is to keep it going!
• 4. Leverage results and set the hooks.
• Make engagement and retention a standing topic in management meetings. Use these meetings to change how you discuss turnover. Percentages are fine for high-level tracking and comparison purposes, but for the most impact, personalize the turnover by talking about a specific person (exit data you may have, where they are going, and so on). Have the leader of that person do the talking, and ask that leader probing questions like, “Did you see it coming?” “Is anyone else in your department at risk?” and so on.

The bigger goal here is to find ways to weave the vision and beliefs into your culture. As we mentioned earlier, start small. The old adage “Success breeds success” is as true today as it has ever been. Remember the national telecommunications client of ours that went from worst to first on the J. D. Power survey of customer satisfaction? They attribute that success to a focus and determination to improve the customer experience by retaining frontline employees and training leaders on how to engage and inspire them.

Building a Winning Strategy

Finally, let’s take one last step back to reexamine what a winning strategy looks like:

• 1. Leadership accountability
• Leaders are a relatively low-cost asset (you already pay them) in the battle to engage and retain the quality of talent you need to succeed, compete, and grow. The importance of holding them accountable for this part of their roles cannot be overstated. It’s what you promoted them to do. Every leader should have engagement and retention goals, incentives to meet those goals, and consequences for failing to do so.
• 2. Adapt your culture to grow
• With the evolution of three generations reshaping the workplace, building your culture will require accommodation and change. Adapting how your workplace operates can reduce friction and enable millennials to contribute their energy and creativity. It’s why you hired them. You will need to actively manage and facilitate the process of reinforcing those elements of your culture that contribute to broad success, while at the same time introducing new and promising elements that keep your organization moving forward on a successful track.
• 3. Career growth and stay interviews
• Many dynamics are at work that can prompt good workers to stay or leave. And one thing is certain: a positive, constructive relationship between each leader and his or her direct reports, based on trust and communication, provides your best shot at inspiring commitment and engagement in your employees. Require leaders to hold periodic stay interviews with each employee. Opening that dialogue is your first swing at combating job and career issues and keeping good people longer.
• 4. Watch the metrics
• Employee engagement surveys once again remain the most common engagement tactic for a good reason: You need data that provides a roadmap on where to apply energy and resources to strengthen your organization. Metrics are ubiquitous today. Use them to your advantage to build on existing strategies or to launch and execute new ones. Track and report results. Educate your organization on the importance of an energized workforce.
• 5. Be aggressive and drive execution
• Keep pushing. Be the champion of an engaged workforce. Expect your organization to be a place where everyone is proud to work and success is assumed. Reward good leaders. Replace or reassign poor ones. This comment from the most recent Workplace America study may say it best: “Employee engagement and retention is currently very good at my organization, but we continue to work on new initiatives to improve and strengthen our employee culture each year.”

TalentKeepers is proud to be a leader in shaping how people view engagement and retention in the workplace, and to develop innovative solutions to help organizations everywhere engage and retain employees. Our hope is that this book has helped you identify those strategies best suited for your culture, needs, and budget.