If your organization is sitting on the fence and investing less in developing your internal team and communicating with your staff and volunteers than externally focused endeavours, a recent study again demonstrates that the lowest hanging fruit can yield the best results. The study found that despite emphasizing the importance of people assets, a staggering amount of employees don’t feel their organizations or their senior management are doing enough to help them become fully engaged and contribute to their organizations’ success. Towers Perrin’s Global Workforce Study not only provides some international benchmarks and comparisons but also concludes the importance of senior leaders demonstrating ‘inspiration, vision and commitment’ and that employees want to work for a company that is seen as a leader. The bottom line of the survey? That the organization itself, and specifically, senior leadership, is the most powerful influencer of employee engagement beyond employees’ personal values and traits. Another recent post, released prior to the survey, on Duct Tape Marketing puts it in another perspective: that if you are not “marketing” to attract and keep staff, and balancing this with an earned reputation for vision and leadership, you’ll be forced to compete by price, or salary, alone. Well said!