A new study by TalentKeepers, a firm that researches and analyzes employee engagement, yields both encouraging and troubling trends about U.S. employers’ attitudes towards worker engagement.

The good news is that employers increasingly recognize that many of their workers will not be happy or engaged in their current position unless they feel it offers them an opportunity to move up in the organization or within the industry.

The perception that there are limited or no chances to move up the career ladder is the best way to lose employees, particularly millennials, says TalentKeepers CEO Christopher Mulligan in an interview with BenefitsPro.

“That has been the number one reason that employees have been voluntarily leaving for the past four years,” he said.

Pre-recession, most workers leaving jobs cited issues with leaders, but in recent years, as more millennials have joined the workforce, employees are more likely to be frustrated by feeling stuck in a job with no way to move up.

Obviously, employers can only do so much to satisfy ambitious employees; a promotion every year is unrealistic, explained Mulligan. But employers can make workers feel better about their career prospects by offering them opportunities to learn new skills and try out different roles within the organization.

Of the 887 employers surveyed, 40 percent said that increasing career opportunities for employees is the strategy most likely to drive employee engagement. That’s a notable increase from last year, when 30 percent said the same the same thing.

Roughly the same proportion of employers — 43 percent — say that leadership strategies were the key to creating engaged employees. Another 10 percent say that organization strategies (down from 16 percent last year) are the key driver, and 7 percent cite co-worker strategies as the most important thing (down from 10 percent).

The bad news, according to TalentKeepers, is that fewer organizations are budgeting money for engagement strategies. The percentage of employers with a dedicated pool of money for engagement initiatives has declined from 71 percent in 2014 to 61 percent this year.

Instant Insights /

Fewer employers spending on employee engagement efforts

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