Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent with recruiters and staffing firms each year by companies trying to attract top talent to empty positions. A natural question posed by the people holding the purse strings for recruiting spend is: Are we getting our money’s worth?

The best-in-class or most engaged organizations (regularly defined as the top 10%) garner the following business and financial outcomes compared to those organizations with average levels of employee engagement:

  • 20 times more innovation and creativity. In addition, 59% of engaged employees report that their job brings out their best creativity versus only 3% for the disengaged employees.
  • 44% higher retention.
  • 37% higher sales.
  • 125% less burnout/job stress. Job stress/workload/lack of work-life balance are the top reasons people contemplate resigning from their jobs.
  • 66% lower absenteeism. Absenteeism costs the average North American employer $3,600 per hourly employee, and $2,650 per salaried employee, per year.
  • 51% less turnover. Turnover costs the American economy more than $300 billion dollars each year. Replacement costs run anywhere from one to two years of base salary for that position.
  • 53% of the actively disengaged are content to continue to cash their paychecks as opposed to begin to look for new employment.
  • Communication is five times more likely to be seen as a positive by the employees.
  • Higher volunteerism by employees leading to 31% higher productivity.
  • Much better safety compliance and thus, fewer workplace accidents. Engaged business units have 62% less safety incidents than their unengaged counterparts.
  • Significantly lower instances of employee theft or what the retail industry commonly calls “shrinkage.” Companies above the 50th percentile on employee engagement versus those in the bottom half experienced a 123% higher success rate in eliminating this theft.
  • Engaged employees are linked to engaged customers at a very high correlation coefficient of .85. Increasing employee engagement also increases ethical behavior. In fact, the two topics are highly correlated. One can only wonder how unengaged GMs engineers were when they decided that $1 per car was too costly to fix the faulty ignition switch that was ultimately linked to the pointless deaths of 13 people. The same Hay/ERC study also reported that engaged employees were much more likely to report misconduct than their unengaged and disengaged coworkers.

A review of the internal memos at GM clearly showed that although many employees noticed the switch problem, the company failed to recall 2.6 million cars until more than one decade later. In this case, a culture of ambivalence and disengagement cost lives.

Furthermore, by finding the right and most engaged top talent for clients, the staffing industry will bolster its reputation as the best place to go when seeking top talent. Happy customers remain existing customers who also become net promoters, who refer you and your firm to new customers.

Lastly, if you are attempting to sell your recruiting services to an executive that only cares about “the bottom line,” share this metric with them:

“Best-in-class organizations are 350% more profitable than organizations with average levels of employee engagement levels.”

Needless to say, this summary is compelling evidence supporting the enormous value-add contributed by recruiters and staffing firms worldwide vis-a-vis employee engagement.