It’s time to synchronize hiring tactics with retention tactics, says consultant Deloitte, or all that top talent you’re bringing in and paying so well will become disenchanted and seek greener pastures elsewhere.

And by retention, Deloitte means engagement, the most important factor in retaining top performers.

In a 2015 survey on human capital trends, Deloitte found that 87 percent of respondents were very concerned about a lack of employee engagement. That’s up from 79 percent last year, and a clear indication that engagement is firmly on the C-suite radar.

But when it comes to taking action to ramp up engagement, companies aren't following through.

This isn’t a tiny survey sample, either: Some 3,300 HR and business leaders in 106 countries participated. Among the high level takeaways:

The number of HR and business leaders who cited engagement as being “very important” doubled from 26 percent last year to 50 percent this year;
60 percent of HR and business leaders surveyed said they do not have an adequate program to measure and improve engagement;
Only 12 percent of HR and business leaders have a program in place to define and build a strong culture;
Only 7 percent rated themselves as excellent at measuring, driving, and improving engagement and retention.

“As demand for talent picks up, the balance of power in business is rapidly shifting from the employer to the employee,” said Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Moreover, workers are becoming more mobile, contingent and autonomous, and as a result, harder to manage and engage. In this new world of work, organizations need to re-imagine the way they manage people and come up with new, out-of-the-box ideas to make themselves relevant.”

But it takes strong leaders to re-imagine the enterprise, and 86 percent of those surveyed identified a lack of strong leadership as a top agenda issue this year. The “leadership gap” was the top concern cited both last year and this year, with the percent who labeled it “very important” increasing from 38 percent last year, to 50 percent this year.

“Recognizing the fact that a general lack of skills is likely to impede business growth, 85 percent of HR and business leaders ranked learning and development as a top issue, compared to 70 percent last year, making this the third most critical issue in this year's survey,” Deloitte reported.

Leaders need strong followers, and this was another area respondents cited as a cause for concern, as “80 percent of respondents cited workforce skills as a top issue (up from 75 percent last year), and 35 percent rated the lack of skills in HR as a ‘very important' problem, up from 25 percent last year.”

The engagement scenario suggested by the survey is one of lack of strong leadership, no true commitment to addressing disengagement, and deteriorating workforce skills among employees who are increasingly disinterested in their work and in the performance of their employer. Or, simply put, a culture of denial.

“According to Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends survey, employee engagement and culture issues exploded onto the scene, rising to become the No. 1 challenge companies face around the world,” Deloitte said. “Culture drives many outcomes in organizations, perhaps most prominently, employee engagement and retention. That can spell bad news for a lot of companies. More than half of respondents say their organizations have either a poor program or no program to measure and improve engagement.”

Instant Insights /

Worried about engagement but doing nothing about it

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