Use Engagement Strategically: 3 Steps to Retain Top Talent

Are You Using Engagement Strategically to Retain Top Talent?
Top performers are constantly on the radar of aggressive recruiters — those who would love to lure them away. Your challenge is to use engagement strategically, creating a work environment so compelling that your high performers feel fully invested and see no reason to look elsewhere. Are your engagement strategies strong enough to keep your most valuable talent committed, motivated, and focused on your organization’s success?

The War for Talent
In the corporate world, “poaching” describes the act of luring employees away from competitors with a more attractive offer. It’s common, it’s persistent, and it sparks ongoing debate about workplace ethics.

Rather than fixating on what others are doing, your energy is far better spent ensuring your top talent is fully engaged, challenged, and satisfied where they are. Research from Facebook shows that employees who choose to stay:

• Find their work enjoyable 31% more often
• Say they use their strengths 33% more often
• Express 37% more confidence that they are gaining skills and experiences needed to accelerate their career

3 Ways to Use Engagement Strategically to Retain Top Talent
Years of assessing corporate culture and guiding employee engagement initiatives have shown that the strongest “feathers” to keep your top talent aren’t higher pay or perks — they’re a healthy, empowering organizational culture that resonates with them. Here are three practical ways to protect your most critical employees from being poached:

1. Take Informal “Happiness” Surveys Often
   The key words here are informal and frequent. Regularly check in with your top performers to understand what motivates them, what challenges they’re ready to tackle, and what frustrations may be holding them back. These conversations aren’t just polite gestures — they’re strategic opportunities to keep your most valuable talent engaged. Ask what excites them in their work, where they want to grow, and what improvements they would suggest.

   Beyond the standard annual engagement survey, solicit their ideas for enhancing the workplace — and importantly, act on the engagement suggestions that make sense for both your people and the organization. Demonstrating that you listen and follow through reinforces their sense of value and belonging.

   This approach isn’t just for top talent; it benefits employees at all levels and should be a routine part of one-on-one meetings with your direct reports. The real impact comes when insights lead to meaningful engagement actions — otherwise, even the best intentions fall flat.

2. Set Up Your Culture as a Positive Differentiator
   Workplace culture is more than perks or slogans — it’s how work actually gets done: the behaviors, mindsets, and assumptions that shape decisions, interactions, and results. This includes both the explicit and unspoken values that guide leaders in hiring, promoting, and even letting go of talent. When your people are aligned with both your culture and your strategy, engagement naturally follows.

   The takeaway is clear: be intentional in designing your culture. Make it authentic, distinctive, and difficult for competitors to replicate. Let your organization be recognized for the culture it embodies — just as Zappos is synonymous with exceptional customer experiences and Southwest Airlines is known for making air travel enjoyable. A strong, intentional culture doesn’t just attract top talent — it keeps them.

3. Engage Employees with a Compelling Vision
   High performers consistently tell us that what matters most to them is understanding what the company is striving to achieve — and feeling that they play a critical role in making it happen. A company’s strategic vision can be defined as “what we hope to become — the business we will be in tomorrow.”

   A compelling vision paints a vivid picture of the future, showing not just where the organization is headed, but what success will look and feel like when you get there. The more detailed and tangible this vision, the stronger its impact. To boost engagement, provide clear direction for the company’s future and explicitly show how your top performers contribute to achieving it.

   The objective is to spark intrigue and challenge, giving your high performers a reason to stay invested in the journey. When done effectively, a compelling vision becomes the adhesive that keeps your most valuable talent motivated, focused, and far less vulnerable to outside poaching.

The Bottom Line
Organizations that use engagement strategically see higher discretionary effort, stronger loyalty, and improved retention. To truly elevate employee engagement, consistently gather feedback, use your culture to strengthen your employee value proposition, and anchor your team around a meaningful purpose that inspires commitment and drives results.

To learn more about how to increase top talent engagement and retention, download How CHRO’s Retain Top Performers