Here is an excerpt from an article written by Karie Willyerd for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, obtain subscription information, and receive HBR email alerts, please click here.

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A high performer can deliver 400% more productivity than the average performer.

Despite this, when most managers look at workforce statistics, all employees tend to be lumped together into a category so broadly defined that it becomes difficult to take meaningful decisions. If your average employee tenure is six years, is that good or bad? You could benchmark the Fortune 500 and find that indeed you would look pretty good, tied at 40th place. But if the people you are keeping are the low performers and your high performers are leaving, would that be really so great?

Last summer, my colleagues and I at SAP conducted a study with Oxford Economics across 27 countries to find out what the future workforce wants. We led twin studies of executives and employees and asked the employees how they were rated on their most recent performance appraisal rating. Of the 2,872 employees, their responses were spread with about 40% being high performers, 40% average, and about 20% below average.

As you would expect, high performers as compared to low performers are more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to leave their jobs in the next six months. But in looking deeply into high performers specifically, you’ll see that the numbers aren’t as comforting as we’d hoped. As you can see in the figures below, one in five high performers are likely to leave in the next six months (versus one in four of employees overall who are likely to leave in the near term), and less than half are satisfied with their jobs.

Our workforce strategy goal should be to double down on retention tactics for high performers. We need improvement. And based on some compelling – and even alarming – discoveries in our research, high performers may not be getting what they need from their managers.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Karie Willyerd is the co-author with Jeanne C. Meister of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today. She is also the Senior Vice President of Learning and Social Adoption at SuccessFactors, an SAP company, and the former CEO of Jambok, a social learning platform acquired by SuccessFactors in 2011. She has held the roles of Chief Talent Officer and Chief Learning Officer for several multinational companies.

To check out my review of The 2020 Workplace, please click here.