My colleagues at Right Management completed an interesting survey recently.  The results might shock some employers — but my hunch is they won’t shock too many employees.

• According to their survey, 60% of employees intend to leave their current jobs when the economy turns.
• And an additional 27% are either actively networking or have updated their resumes.

Add that up.  87% of employees — your employees — are unhappy enough to want to move on when things get better.  What would happen to your organization if 87% walked out?

But more important, of those 87% which ones are your critical employees — the ones who drive a disproportionate share of your companies’ business performance and generate greater-than-average value for customers and shareholders.  Probably a bunch, so my advice to you is to step up your efforts to engage these critical folks to motivate them to stick around.

How?  The answers are simple, but not easy to pull off.  Talent-savvy organizations support their key people on the issues they care about the most:

• Give them — or allow them to do — work that engages them
• Help them learn how to do their jobs even better
• Provide ongoing fresh challenges
• Give them opportunities to interact with people — at all levels — in positive ways

I’m not suggesting that anyone should dread the recovery (hurry up, recovery!), but I am suggesting that smart companies are preparing for that recovery right now.  Develop those strategies to insure your best people stay put!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under World of Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.