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Reward High Performers in a Tough Economy

According to a new study by Leadership IQ, 47% of high performers are actively looking for other jobs. While it's terrible that almost half of high performers in the workforce are thinking about quitting, what's perhaps even worse is that low performers want to stay. Only 18% of low-performing employees are actively seeking other jobs, and 25% of middle performers are actively looking around.

Leadership IQ surveyed 16,237 employees on a range of workforce and retention issues, and then divided them into high-, middle- and low-performer categories based on their annual performance appraisal scores. There were 3,896 employees identified as high performers, 8,607 identified as middle performers and 3,734 low performers.

"High performers keep companies in business," says Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, "so every company is at risk if these people leave. If you lose some low performers, you might actually be better off. But when your best people quit, revenue drops, quality suffers and issues increase. Even large companies can take a big hit with the departure of just a few key employees."