The real crisis organizations face is a shortage of employees capable of thinking critically and making tough decisions. The writing was on the wall for everyone to see. There’s a mass exodus underway in the workforce as some 10,000 Baby Boomers turn 65 every single day. The result is that the number of Boomers in the workforce has dropped by 2.2 million every year since 2010—or an average of 5,900 people a day. That leak won’t stop anytime soon since by 2030, all Baby Boomers will be 65. The problem is that plenty of people missed the signs of this trend—and now they’re paying the price as the number of openings exceeds the number of available workers willing to apply for new jobs. The challenge is exacerbated for those companies looking to hire for specific skillsets.

One Sentence Engagement? Is it truly possible to condense the science of employee engagement into a single sentence? It is and I’m about to convince you of that. But first I need to explain why I’m taking this extreme exercise in reductionism. Studying leadership and employee engagement has been a passion of mine for the last couple of decades. As an entrepreneur, I used engagement to chase and eventually catch a Best Place to Work award. As an author, one book on engagement somehow turned into three. One speech turned into a global tour. And this article on engagement is number one hundred and something.   <> I know of no topic that is more important to the long-term success of a business than engagement.

  How The Jaybro Group is leveling up its culture by teaching their employees to think and act like owners. As the War for Talent continues to rage across the global workforce, a few companies have made bold moves to make themselves what we might call “employers of choice.” In other words, they’re building the kinds of organizational cultures that allow them to attract and retain world-class talent even in the face of tremendous competition. A prime example of a company leading the way in building a standout organizational culture is the Jaybro Group, a full-service supplier of consumables, safety, geosynthetic fabrics, temporary fencing, and barriers to the infrastructure and construction sector in Australia and New Zealand. In April 2021, Jaybro received an award that simply made official what everyone at Jaybro already believed. Jaybro was officially certified as a great workplace by the Global Authority, Great Place to Work®—an organization recognizing the best places to work in Australia for more than 14 years. “Being a Great Place to Work gives us an advantage as we continue to attract the best talent and build brand recognition in the civil and infrastructure supply sector,” says Alison Passey, Jaybro’s Group HR Manager. “The employees who are an excellent fit for our culture remain with us for longer, are happier, and are more engaged in their work because they have found their ‘tribe.’”

Over the years, I’ve interviewed over 200 highly successful CEOs, military officers, entrepreneurs, and leadership gurus including John C. Maxwell, Ken Blanchard, Stephen M.R. Covey, Liz Wiseman, Kim Scott, Patty McCord, and others. I always get them to reveal their number one secret to workplace leadership; what advice would they give to a younger version of themselves? After analyzing their answers 10 themes emerged.

In almost every business, the cost of human capital is one of the biggest expenses, sometimes as much as 70% of a company's annual budget. Despite this fact, many organizations don't invest in an employer brand plan. Similar to lead generation campaigns that target new customers, this brand communication plan focuses on the talent audience. With unemployment continuing to trend under 4%, and companies' focus on employee recruitment and retention as we all fight in the war for talent, savvy leaders are starting to invest in employer brand strategies as part of their growth plan and competitive advantage. Here's How to Play by the Numbers:

Inspired to diversify their employee-owned business, Malco Products has revived an abandoned factory and its iconic brand from the bottom up. The U.S. has been bleeding manufacturing jobs for decades. Back in 1980, for example, more than one-third of men with a high school degree worked in the manufacturing sector . But those numbers soon began a rapid decline fueled by a combination of factors ranging from the rise in automation and rising competition with nations like China to an increase in the so-called “skills gap” that left many manufacturing jobs unfilled due to a lack of workers qualified to fill those openings. That’s why, today,  manufacturing jobs make up about 8% of total employment , according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The War for Talent is now in full swing. As the economy continues to reopen, companies have begun hiring again in earnest—driving the unemployment rate closer to pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, the number of open jobs in the U.S.—an estimated 9.2 million—is now breaking records. It’s one of those rare times in recent history where the number of job openings exceeds the number of unemployed people actually looking for a job.

Most companies these days are struggling to find enough people to chase all the opportunities in front of them. SRC, the birthplace of the Great Game of Business®, is no exception.  Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings, understands that if SRC is going to be successful in the long run, it needs to become a better competitor in the “War for Talent.” One way to do so is for SRC to leverage The Great Game of Business methodology to create a line of sight where everyone inside the organization is focused on that goal. By making people their Critical Number, this is no longer just a problem for the human resource department to overcome: it becomes the focus for the entire company.

How Growth and Contingency Planning Can Help You Focus On Your Best Opportunities While Saying No To Distractions. The economy is opening up in a big way. Forecasts now peg the GDP to rise as astounding 6% this year. For some organizations out there, it might feel like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant to keep up with that kind of growth. Many of the SRC companies, for example, are seeing an unprecedented surge in demand for their products and services—levels the company hasn’t seen in nearly 40 years.

  The Company's Largest Shareholder Think about how most people you encounter daily don’t really enjoy waking up and going to work every day if they go at all. When many (or most) people reach a certain age, they find it more comforting to think ahead to retirement than focus on what they might need to do that day at work. And yet there is an associate at our company, SRC, who still chooses to come to work even though he’s seventy-one. His job on the factory floor pays him about $31,000 a year. He doesn’t continue working for the pay; he shows up every day because he sincerely loves his job.