As many HR executive search employees know, job retention has become more of a problem in recent years. In fact, HR executive search recruiters and other human resources consultants and professionals now say that job retention is their number one concern when it comes to the companies and businesses that they work for and with. HR executive search employees have been seeing rising numbers of people leaving their jobs, and many such HR executive search employees feel that they are scrambling to make heads or tails of why this is happening.

Fortunately, such HR executive search employees and outplacement consulting companies have been able to come to a few conclusions, isolating just a couple of the factors as to why sixty percent of Millennials – who are sometimes known as the job hopping generation – are willing at any moment to pick up and leave their current job for a better one. For one, employee engagement in the work place is a real problem. In fact, only around twenty percent of all employees currently working in the United States feels that their superior is adequately encouraging and helpful. Many employees, unfortunately, feel that they have no one to turn to when they are struggling with their work, making it easy to feel the lack of a solid support system acutely in the work place. For many employees, keeping an eye out for a better place to work is second nature, though they are likely to find similar problems in their new place of work as well (and so on and so forth). As many as thirty six percent of HR executive search professionals also believe that it is simply poor hiring practices that lead to poor employee retention rates as well, citing the lack of a good skills match between the person who is hired and the requirements of the job. This can happen for a number of reasons, from lying on a resume to an interview that is simply not as thorough as it should be.

However, though there are many problems with employee retention and many causes for such problems, there are steps that each and every work place can take to eliminate these risk factors as much as possible. For instance, having employee recognition programs is incredibly successful at increasing overall employee engagement as well as their happiness at their place of work. In fact, it is so effective that more than eighty five percent of all places where such programs have been implemented have found that overall employee satisfaction has risen by a considerable degree.

On top of this, increasing the diversity of any given work place can also be hugely beneficial not only to employee satisfaction and overall happiness, but to total employee success as well. Data more than backs this up, showing us that work places that were gender diverse outperformed work places of a similar nature that were not gender diverse by as much as fifteen percent. And work places in the United States that were ethnically diverse outperformed those work places that were lacking in diversity by as much as thirty five percent – no small number, to be sure. Though there is sometimes backlash against the increasing focus on diversity in the United States, there’s no questioning the fact that diversity is important and is overwhelmingly a very positive change that has been made (and is in the process of) throughout companies and businesses in all parts of the United States.

As any HR executive search professional is all too clearly aware of, job retention is no small problem here in the United States. In fact, as more and more people from the Millennial generation become active and important contributing members of the work force of this country, the problem surrounding job retention is only likely to continue to increase – that is, unless steps are taken to stop this problem in its tracks (or at least slow it down just a little). Fortunately, programs like employee recognition programs can help at many companies, if even just by a little bit.