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Job-hopping is the new normal in today’s workplace, and it’s not limited to recent graduates. People of all ages are leaving their jobs for greener pastures more frequently than they used to. The median tenure for workers over the age of 55 is just 2.53 years, and our research shows that one in four workers will leave their jobs this year. We’ve got a retention problem that spans generations, and it’s costing companies billions of dollars every year. 

Have you ever set up an interview with a promising candidate who never showed up? Has a potential new hire quit responding to your emails and phone calls? This behavior is known as ghosting and it’s happening more frequently as the job market strengthens.

In August, 3.6 million people voluntarily quit their jobs in search of better pay, better hours or a better cultural fit.  In a market flush with opportunities, candidates have no trouble securing multiple job offers and an increasing number of them don’t bother to communicate when they choose not to accept a job. It’s a disturbing trend, but what can employers do about it?

The old notion that customers come first is being augmented by a new market reality. If you don’t treat employees like customers, they won’t put forth the extra effort required to keep your customers happy.

These days, the “employee experience” is generating a lot of buzz, but market leaders have always understood that creating better employee experiences is vital to success. In the current business environment, several factors have converged to make creating great employee experiences more important than ever:

Employee engagement: the buzzword is everywhere, but can anyone really agree on what it means? How do you measure it? And how can you build an effective strategy that works in your unique company culture?

Employee engagement is tricky to define because it represents different things to different people. Some companies describe engagement as an emotional commitment to the company that includes both loyalty and dedication to achieving goals. Others define engagement in terms of productivity.

The truth is that both viewpoints are right. Engagement expert and Chief Scientific officer at Engage2Excel Jack Wiley, Ph.D. defines it this way: “Employee engagement is the extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organizational success and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplishing tasks important to the achievement of organizational goals.”