America’s workplace has taken us on quite a run over the past two decades. Riding the dot-com boom that fueled the “war for talent” during the 1990s, the bubble suddenly burst in 2000, slipping us into a recession. By 2003, job growth, income, and employee optimism were soaring again, this time powered by subprime mortgages and suspect lending practices that, as you know, all came crashing down, starting at the end of 2007, sending the US economy into an extended funk. For too many Americans, employment opportunities dried up, wages stagnated, businesses closed, and growth largely came to a halt.

Thankfully, the long road to recovery began in 2014 and was paved with the longest stretch of continuous job growth in our history. In 2018, the American economy continued to grow and expand resulting in record low unemployment rates. The National Total Unemployment rate was 4.1%, a full point below the 5.1% rate which the US Federal Reserve considers “full employment.” The unemployment rate for those with college degrees is almost half the total unemployment rate at 2.1%. For employees, if you want to work you have choices. For employers, if you want workers you have to be able to engage them in order to get them to stay!

Studying the American workforce throughout this roller coaster of a ride, we took a deep dive, looking for those things that keep people going at work in good times and bad. What we discovered motivated us to write this book, propelled by our desire to share what we learned.

What inspires people and fuels a commitment to their employers, their roles, and their leaders? How do “best-in-class” organizations retain great people while competition is fierce in areas like technology, healthcare, engineering, and even skilled trades? Are employers adapting quickly enough to keep millennials—the largest generation in the workforce—committed and inspired in their jobs? What impact do leaders, at all levels, have in building trust and strong relationships with their team members? Do leaders really understand the impact they have on their team members’ engagement and decisions to stay or leave? This book explores these questions and many, many more, offering a series of practical strategies and tactics you can put to work within your organization and with your team.

We have the privilege of working with and learning from many of the world’s most successful organizations representing nearly every industry. Our hope is that, through this book, you, too, will learn new ways to strengthen your culture and raise the collective energy and performance of everyone with whom you work.

We would like to thank our clients, colleagues, and families for their insights, collaboration, and support, without which this book would not be possible.

Picture Walt Disney World. We are standing in the Magic Kingdom, and the grand parade that takes place every day is rolling past. The parade has been exciting and entertaining, full of genuinely magical spectacles, and here at the end, heading toward us right now, is the final float, the one that excites the children more than any other. Here comes Mickey Mouse.

With this book, that’s not what interests us. We could not possibly quantify the particular magic of Mickey Mouse. Many have tried that already, and we are not sure anyone has quite succeeded. Mickey is simply magic incarnate, we suppose. No, what interests us with this book is the guy coming up behind Mickey’s float. We’re interested not in the cast member who occupies that Mickey suit, but rather in the one who cleans up after the horse that pulls Mickey’s carriage.

This is a true story. We knew a Magic Kingdom Parade cast member whose job was to follow Mickey Mouse’s horse-drawn coach, which is always the last float in the procession of the daily three o’clock parade at the Magic Kingdom. This means that this one cast member was the last person anyone saw in the parade. His job? To shovel the horses’ poop into a large can he pushed around on wheels.

So here’s an employee who gets to parade in front of thousands of people every day as he winds his way through the Magic Kingdom, and he’s doing it all with that rancid-smelling bucket rolling along at his side. If that had been us, we might have had a hard time getting enthusiastic about the role—never mind engagement. We would have been looking for a new job pretty much from the moment that first parade ended on our first day. This particular cast member, though, always had a smile on his face. He was so committed to the magic that is Disney World and the joy that it brought to so many people that he didn’t just believe, but knew that every scoop he shoveled into his bucket was a key part of keeping that magic alive. He wasn’t shoveling horse poop; he was making magic.

With this book, we are going to be discussing engagement strategies for today and tomorrow’s workplace. And as leaders of organizations, the kind of engagement we strive for in every one of our employees should be exactly the kind of engagement we saw in that Disney cast member shoveling horse manure. That level of engagement is the surest way to bring perpetually positive energy to the workplace. It energizes everyone around you. It leads to commitment and loyalty. It causes the organization to retain more of its high-level talent. It helps develop lesser performers into workers that can make a more positive and lasting impact. It improves a staff’s effectiveness from top to bottom. And if it works for someone whose job is literally to shovel horse dung into a bucket, then it can and will work for any role in any organization.

Blink, and Your Staff Has Changed

Think about the dynamics of the people and teams you have worked with recently. You may have noticed an interesting, if not troubling, trend: These days, the workforce on which we depend changes rapidly. People leave their employers for new opportunities more frequently than ever before. More and more often, organizations find themselves committing the time and resources to train a new employee, only to see him underperform or even depart before ever making a meaningful impact. Often, this leads to an underlying drain on the energy and commitment of an entire staff.

To succeed in this remarkably fluid new workplace, the best organizations must find ways to invigorate their staffs. That invigoration comes with a new focus on the importance of managers and the critical role they play in employee engagement and retention.

These trends are no accident. The rate of turnover from the retiring baby boomers to the millennial generation is almost unprecedented. Five million millennials enter the job market every year, bringing with them all the values, habits, and expectations unique to their background. The challenge that so many leaders face is how to energize a workforce whose needs seem to evolve and change from one day to the next.

Another part of the difficulty is in understanding and bridging cultural differences. Younger workers in the twenty-first century value different things than the stalwarts nearing the twilight of their careers. On top of that, you have the constantly advancing (and often disruptive) march of technological development. Myriad tasks have become automated, dramatically shifting workflows and rendering obsolete what used to be key roles. Throw in each individual employee’s preferences for mode of communication, the spectrum of his or her expectations for how and when each might advance with a promotion, and the increasingly public manner in which social media allows us to lead our personal and professional lives. Add it all up, and we find that managers at every level often feel as if they are drinking from a veritable firehose of data. It can be all too difficult for them to keep up with changing demands, shifting staffs, and objectives that often feel like moving targets.

Although the pressures related to maintaining a hardworking and loyal workforce are nothing new, employers both large and small have recently begun to think about employee retention in a revolutionary new way. It all started during the so-called “war for talent” that came with the technology boom of the late 1990s. When the tech bubble burst, it left a vacuum of talent and created an incredibly volatile job market. Through it all, the organizations that found the greatest success were those that thought of employee engagement and retention not as a matter for the human resources (HR) department but as a deliberate business strategy. They saw that investing in the energization of their workforce improved productivity, managerial effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and the bottom line across the board.

We have used the word engagement a couple of times already, so we should take a moment to define it. Engagement is that level an employee reaches when she is ultimately committed to the organization, the leader, and the tasks at hand. An engaged employee brings discretionary effort to the job. She is passionate about the work, yes, but more importantly, she puts in the extra effort and thought that opens up new meaning in the tasks she performs every day. This employee doesn’t simply do the work; she contributes to a larger purpose for the organization.

Embracing the Data (and Everything After)

We are well past the tipping point in our knowledge of the impact an engaged workforce can have on sustained organizational performance and success. Engaged employees act like caffeine for an organization—a java-crew that can enliven people around them, inspire creativity, promote high performance, and delight customers. You already know that, and most executives agree with you. It’s no surprise that, today, 82% of all organizations make engagement a strategic priority, with over one-third of them ranking it among their top talent initiatives.

Trends tend to ebb and flow. Our workforce always seems to be in flux, with unemployment rates falling and rising in step with economic cycles. However, the impact that millennials are having, and will have, in shaping the future of work will be with us for a long time. Over the past year, millennials managed to overtake the baby boomers as America’s largest generation in the workforce. The millennial generation comes with its own particular motivations and challenges, which we will get into later in the book. Perhaps the most recognizable characteristic of millennials is their connectedness, always exchanging information on a variety of mobile devices. Surprisingly, despite these motivations and challenges, less than 25% of all organizations use social media as an aid to connect with employees, build commitment, and promote retention. Not surprisingly, the exception is a best-in-class group of employers, where 55% have integrated social media in some form to assist their engagement and retention efforts.

Another unusual trend: For the first time in the twelve-year history of the TalentKeepers engagement-and-retention study known as Workplace America, the area most impacted by low engagement and high turnover was reportedly “Morale and Culture.” There is no question that employers who work hard to energize workers, create opportunity for growth, and build pride enjoy stronger business results and achieve greater long-term success. But for those that fail or never even try the resulting downward spiral can be dire. One executive who completed this year’s survey ended it by saying, “These questions have scared me.”

Yes, more organizations are finding ways to generate, analyze, and use data to guide talent-management practices. The majority of them understand that employee data is the third leg of the key metrics stool. That’s why, in 2016, employee surveys were the most popular and effective way of gathering relevant and actionable data on employee engagement. The problem isn’t that organizations are refusing to collect data. The problem is that too many leaders with access to this data never wind up doing anything with it. This still boggles our minds, that even after organizations expend all the time and resources it takes to survey their staffs—after all the analysis, presentations, and discussions—they don’t ask their leaders to do anything about it.

Applying workplace data is what we intend to explore with this book. We’ll make the case for how the data can work for your organization, but more importantly, we’ll make the case for your leaders’ incredibly important role in using this data to improve engagement and retention and, as a result, to improve every aspect of the organization. In a major study we undertook earlier this year that included over 30,000 employees, those employees who believed their leader took some action as a result of the survey were 11% more engaged on every index we measured. The impact this has on business metrics can’t be understated. Let’s figure out how to make that happen for your organization.

The Confluence of Generations

All the talk lately has been about baby boomers and millennials, but consider this: The most senior members of generation X are turning fifty. In just ten years, they’ll be nearing retirement age even as the last of the baby boomers are stepping down from work. This leaves millennials—the focus of so much hyperbole both complimentary and critical—as the largest, most diverse, and best educated generation yet.

A key question as we move forward is this: How well is your organization managing these three diverse generations? Where you work, are you witnessing a coalition of the generations or a collision of them? Perhaps, more importantly, has your organization begun to adapt to the incoming workforce? If you’re a millennial, is your organization doing a good job creating the kind of workplace that’s exciting, hard working, and one you would recommend to your friends? Based on our most recent studies, the likely answer for most of you is no. After all, only 40% of all organizations are providing their leaders with training on how to manage the millennials. At the same time, training for millennial leaders on how to tailor their leadership practices to gen X and boomers is, well, hard to find.

This slow growth in preparing leaders to better manage millennial employees is not due to a lack of knowledge. Eighty percent of organizations believe their leaders are, in fact, challenged by managing employees of different generations. Even the best in class report that their leaders are similarly challenged by this blending of three generations in the workplace, with 91% admitting to this challenge.

The millennial generation is the future of every organization. Major change is equally inevitable. But this doesn’t mean we need to drastically change immediately. Rather, we can slowly adapt in ways that appeal to all generations with continual benefit for the bottom line. One of our survey respondents added that, “Open communication, autonomy, purpose, and mastery will be huge in engagement and motivation.” We could not agree more.

“Begging Them to Stay”

That was one response when we asked for a description of the best strategy for managing employee retention. Although that may sound jokingly desperate, it speaks to what many employers are feeling. Organizations of all sizes are regrettably getting worse at retaining employees overall and, in particular, at keeping high performers. Only 15% describe themselves as “very effective” in retaining their best employees, whereas 36% are “not at all effective” or only “slightly effective” at retaining employees.

It’s well understood that opportunity alone does not drive turnover, but it is a big factor. In fact, “job and career” issues have been the top reasons organizations have been losing people since the great recession began to ease in 2011. This overtook “ineffective leaders,” which had long been the top reason people moved on. Most recently, however, leaders are increasingly a key stimulus for turnover. With that in mind, it will be important for us to figure out how to shift your organization’s focus toward improving leadership practices.

Good Leadership Still Wins

This year’s Workplace America survey has once again reminded us of the importance of leaders on employee engagement and retention. How well are leaders doing? Sixty-one percent of organizations believe that their leaders are at least moderately effective in their impact on employee engagement, with 15% having leaders that are very effective at energizing their workers.

Everybody knows that good communication is essential to promoting a healthy and productive workplace culture. This core interpersonal skill is at the top of the list of leadership development initiatives that, if improved, would have the greatest organizational benefit. Leaders are getting more effective at explaining the “why” behind organizational changes to their teams, highlighting the importance of effective communication between leaders and their employees.

Communication is the lubricant of an engaging workplace culture; silence is the friction. One of the best-in-class organizations said it well. When asked to describe the most successful employee engagement and retention tactic they used, this executive was clear: We require “monthly staff meetings, open communication, and transparency at all levels” of our business. All of that flows from the leaders to the staff. This makes leaders the most important factors in implementing your engagement and retention strategy. In the coming chapters, we’re going to outline some strategies on exactly how (and why) this works.

Building a Winning Strategy

“I didn’t realize how bleak things were until I answered these questions,” said one executive in response to a follow-up query we asked regarding the study. If things really are bleak, “begging people to stay,” as one participant wisecracked, may be your best, last-ditch play. But we all know it is better to focus on proven strategies and tactics that align with your priorities—strategies and tactics that attack the pain points, fit your budget, and can be embraced by your culture.

There is no magic solution or one-size-fits-all approach. The rewards of improved results and a vibrant work environment that come with high engagement and retention can only increase over time through the sustained execution of effective strategies.

How do we ensure that happens for your organization? How do you keep talented people motivated and engaged in this rapidly evolving environment? If you’re asking these questions, then you’ve come to the right book.