APQC Anticipates Challenges Ahead, Announces New Study to Identify Best Practices in Increasing Employee Engagement and Managing Post-Recession Employee Turnover

APQC will launch a new human capital consortium study "Rewarding, Engaging, and Retaining Key Talent" in December 2009 to help organizations understand best practices for recognizing, rewarding, motivating, engaging, and retaining key talent as the economy rebounds. Marc Drizin, a leading researcher, author, and consultant on employee engagement best practices, has been selected as the study's special adviser.

Houston, Texas (PRWEB) September 21, 2009

Organizations are struggling to reward, motivate, and retain their current employee base in an environment characterized by cost cutting, fear of change, and low morale, while facing anticipated employee turnover as the economy rebounds. APQC, a nonprofit organization, will launch a new human capital consortium study "Rewarding, Engaging, and Retaining Key Talent" in December 2009 to help organizations understand best practices for rewarding, motivating, engaging and retaining key talent.

APQC has selected Marc Drizin, a nationally-recognized expert on employee engagement, as the study's special adviser. His most recent national workforce engagement benchmark study revealed that only four out of ten U.S. employees are fully engaged and willing to stay with their employer longer, work harder for customers, and recommend the organization as a great place to work.

"The high unemployment rate has the indirect impact of trapping employees in their job, due to the perceived lack of other jobs available for them. Today's organizations have to create an environment where employees want to stay instead of feeling like they have to stay, or they will lose key talent as the economy starts to recover," said Drizin.

"Best practice organizations can avoid costly, unwanted employee turnover. APQC's newest human capital consortium benchmarking study will help organizations take a proactive stance to engaging and retaining critical talent," said Rachele Williams, APQC Program Manager, Human Capital Management.

Key study content issues include:

Employee engagement and retention strategy
Employee engagement and retention process
Human capital practices that engage employees and increase retention
Engagement outcomes

Consortium benchmarking studies employ APQC's award-winning benchmarking methodology that extracts proven, real world best practices from industry-leading organizations. Participants get the knowledge they need to make major improvements in a fraction of the time and approximately one-tenth the cost of conducting an external best practice study on their own.

The APQC "Rewarding, Engaging, and Retaining Key Talent" study will launch in December 2009, with site visits scheduled for December 2009 through February 2010. It will culminate with a virtual knowledge sharing session in March 2010 to share ideas and best practices. For information visit http://www.apqc.org/studies/engagingkeytalent09 or contact Rachele Williams at rwilliams@apqc.org or 800-776-9676, extension 4697.

About APQC
A global resource for process and performance improvement, APQC discovers improvements methods, identifies benchmarks and best practices, disseminates findings and connects individuals. APQC's employees conduct benchmarking and best practices research, offer training and publish reports on productivity, quality, benchmarking, knowledge management and other areas. Founded in 1977, the member-based nonprofit serves more than 500 organizations. For information, visit http://www.APQC.org or call 800-776-9676 or +1-713-681-4020.

About Marc Drizin
Marc Drizin has amassed an impressive body of employee and customer loyalty, engagement, and retention expertise over a research and consulting career spanning nearly three decades. His unique ability to link international research and digestible employee-centric ideas to an organization's bottom line performance takes him around the world to work with companies and business leaders on a range of employee loyalty, engagement, and retention issues. Drizin is a National Speaker Association member and his unique ability to make business topics interesting is best evidenced through his interactive Employee Hold'em™ card game, which Drizin has played with more than 17,000 participants around the world and consistently earns him top ratings from conference attendees. Since 2004, he has conducted three biennial workforce engagement benchmark studies. Drizin is also an author of three WorldatWork books: Workforce Engagement, Strategies to Attract, Motivate, and Retain Talent, now in its second printing; Employee Engagement Fundamentals: A Guide for Managers & Supervisors; and the upcoming Designing Employee Recognition Programs. For information, visit http://www.marcdrizin.com, Drizin's blog at http://www.firefasthireslow.com, or call 317-770-0209.

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