Talent Keepers

Chapter 8Building the Business Case for Engagement and Retention

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 ...