Employee retention continues to remain a top priority at many organizations, and one that companies increasingly view as a driver of business strategy. Business-critical knowledge can walk out the door when an employee leaves the company. While employee retention figures have long been used by companies as a measure of their performance in developing an effective organization, this view of employee retention is not only outdated, but these figures may not be comprehensive enough to truly determine the organization’s effectiveness.

The concept of employee retention is more complex than simply evaluating employee turnover from one year to the next. These figures of employee retention can be somewhat misleading— it isn’t necessarily the number of employees an organization loses that should be of concern, but rather the number of top-performing employees who leave the company. For example, management is one of the key reasons employees decide to stay or leave an organization. If there is high turnover among the management ranks, employees will feel unstable in this ever-changing environment. On the other hand, it may not be the best business strategy to retain a manager who is disliked by employees.

The business strategy of employee retention actually lies with employee engagement; retention is an outcome of engagement. What most organizations fail to realize is that employee engagement is the biggest retention factor they can control. Engaged employees not only stay longer with the organization, but they are more productive, more conscientious, make fewer errors and take better care of customers. The business strategy of employee retention must incorporate methods that achieve a high level of employee engagement among the organization’s top performers, not necessarily the entire workforce.

The Importance of Retaining Top Performers
Many organizations ponder the questions, “What should the goal be for retention?” and “What is an appropriate level of employee turnover?” Yet, in asking these questions, many organizations don’t realize that there are no set answers. If, for example, an organization loses five percent of its top performers every year, the results from this turnover could be potentially devastating to the company. On the other hand, if the company is losing 20 percent of its least productive employees, this could actually be very beneficial for the organization and an opportunity to increase the strength of its workforce.

In other words, it’s not just about retention— it’s about retaining the very best people at each level within the organization. The key to effective retention of top performers is to determine the factors that currently do, and will, keep them engaged.

The Starting Point
An organization must first determine who the top performers and high potentials are within its workforce. This can be accomplished by involving management at every level to create a list of employees who are performing at levels that exceed expectations and those who exhibit the potential to become top performers, or by utilizing the results from employee performance reviews to separate those who scored the highest from those who scored the lowest.

This method of gaining a clear understanding of who the top performers are within an organization is called employee segmentation. Once an organization has segmented its workforce, it can then start to measure retention among its highest potential and highest rated, or most productive, employees. By viewing each segment separately, organizations are creating a more appropriate benchmark to measure employee retention, in other words, is the organization retaining or losing a high percentage of its best people?

Employee Engagement at Each Level
Employee segmentation is an important method to use when evaluating employee engagement at each level. For instance, the factors that engage the most productive employees in an organization may not be the factors that engage the least productive employees. Those employees who receive the highest rankings on their performance reviews may tend to express higher levels of job satisfaction when they are presented with challenging opportunities that allow them to grow and learn. Those who receive the lowest rankings might be more focused on issues surrounding work/life balance and job security.

While some factors, such as good communication, are important among all employees, the attempt to focus on the full spectrum of factors that engage the entire workforce may cause an organization to omit some of the factors that are the most important to the company’s most productive people. In other words, by honing in on the factors that engage an organization’s top performers, the company is likely to benefit from the increased longevity of these employees.

Employee Satisfaction Does Not Equal Engagement
While organizations may be aware “through the grapevine” that employees are unsatisfied, it is the reasons for the dissatisfaction that elude them. While employee satisfaction is important, it is not the end game—it is only one piece of employee engagement. Satisfaction is imperative in that, for those individuals who are top performers, satisfaction may be derived from their achievement orientation, their ambition or their sense of responsibility. On the other hand, the attempt to satisfy an underperformer who will only be content with a lightened workload may not be a worthy cause. Again, the focus is on ensuring that those individuals who have been identified as top performers and high potentials are engaged in the organization.

As stated, employee engagement incorporates employee satisfaction, but also includes the essential elements of pride, commitment and loyalty to the organization. Engaged employees aren’t concerned with meeting the minimum requirements to complete a task, they are focused on what they can do to better the company. Essentially, they take ownership in the company whether or not they actually own shares of stock in the organization.

The Role of Employee Engagement Surveys
Employee engagement surveys determine the factors that make and keep the workforce engaged. With engagement surveys, the issues that are driving morale up or down can be pinpointed because the surveys provide an equal opportunity for the entire population to have a voice. For example, an organization may have created an entire program around work/life balance. Yet, the results of the company’s employee engagement survey indicate that this program is only representative of the needs of a small segment of the organization when, in fact, the top-performers are actually seeking more opportunities and challenges in their daily work.

Regardless of an organization’s size or number of locations, an employee engagement survey provider can assist the organization with project management from start to finish. The provider’s team of experts works alongside the organization to design the survey and provide administration, whether it’s via the web or paper-based. For many organizations, it is important to have a thirdparty administrator to provide certainty that individual results will be kept confidential. Survey providers can also tabulate the results, offer comprehensive reporting and analysis and action-planning assistance.

The Employee Engagement Survey ProcessBefore the employee engagement survey process begins, the organization needs to make sure that management, at all levels, supports the task. This can mean providing management with demonstrations that show the survey will be objective, legitimate, measurable and statistically valid. A lack of enthusiasm at any level can hurt the process and the effective use of the survey results. An organization can also determine who the influencers are in their company and get these people excited about driving the survey process. They can help spread the word before and during survey administration, as well as assist in making sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in follow-up meetings and the action planning process.

Once survey administration is complete, an experienced employee engagement survey provider is able to analyze the survey results to provide the top areas that are driving engagement in the organization’s workforce. Although they vary from industry to industry and organization to organization, and may even change year to year, there are six elements that are the most common drivers of employee engagement: involvement and belonging, recognition, growth and development opportunities, optimism about the vision and future of the organization, leadership trust and open, two-way communication. There are also a number of other important areas, such as issues around diversity, policies and procedures, safety, and compensation and benefits, which can also be drivers of engagement.

Taking Action with Results
Once the driving factors of engagement have been determined, the company can focus on two or three areas. It is important for the organization to begin concentrating on, and putting energy toward, the factors that will make the most difference to the employees.

The employee engagement survey process also must conclude with an appropriate follow-up procedure and is not a worthy endeavor for the organization if top management only views the results. The results and expectations how the information will be used to leverage, create and enact development plans and should be shared throughout the organization. Once results are shared with managers, it is important that managers, in turn, share the results with each of their employees and allow them the opportunity to participate in the follow-up process. An employee engagement survey provider can also help managers get behind the results and develop action-oriented plans that are specific, measurable, accountable and time-bound.

Linking the Results
As previously mentioned, employee engagement is linked to retention. The results from an employee engagement survey can actually show an organization the specific components of engagement that are having the most influence on retention. For example, many employees are not as likely to leave a company as they are to leave a manager, and in other instances, leadership issues could highly influence employee engagement and retention.

Employee engagement survey providers are also able to help organizations link survey results back to customer satisfaction. For example, an organization can determine how satisfied its customers are going to be six months from now by tracking the engagement level of its employees. In other words, it is likely that a current event in an organization that causes morale or engagement to go up or down will affect the way customers feel about the organization within a six-month period.

The Import ance of an Annual Survey
It is not enough to conduct an employee engagement survey every few years—this does not provide adequate support for the action-planning process. Allowing significant time to lapse before letting employees know whether goals were reached can reduce motivation. It is recommended that organizations conduct, at a minimum, annual surveys. With a continuous cycle in place, employee engagement surveys allow an organization to know whether they are seeing results, which, in turn, influences business success.

While employee engagement surveys aren’t the only way for an organization to discover whether or not employees are engaged, they are an objective, quantifiable way for an organization to measure and know precisely the level of improvement, or lack thereof, of employee engagement. Obtaining a picture of the factors that drive employee engagement within an organization can also be empowering. Once the organization knows what’s wrong, it can eliminate the hurdle. Incorporating an employee engagement survey as a key element of the organization’s employee retention strategy will not only help retain top performers, it will help improve customer service and— ultimately—the bottom line.