In December 2015, nearly 3.1 million American workers voluntarily quit their jobs, marking the highest level of voluntary departures since 2006. While this trend points to a strengthening labor market, hiring rates remain static as employers struggle to find qualified candidates to fill the positions. It’s not surprising that, according to The Conference Board’s 2016 CEO survey, employee recruitment and retention is a top concern for CEOs worldwide.

Widespread turnover can have a crippling effect on any size business. Turnover typically costs businesses a little more than 20 percent of an employee’s salary. For highly paid jobs, turnover costs can skyrocket up to 213 percent.

So what is contributing to this rapid turnover trend, and how can the arts help?

A 2014 PwC study revealed that “Employees most committed to their organizations put in 57 percent more effort on the job—and are 87 percent less likely to resign—than employees who consider themselves disengaged.” Both the Society of Human Resource Management and Gallup report that employees in the United States remain only moderately tuned in at work. Gallup went so far as to say that we’re facing an “employee engagement crisis.”

Americans for the Arts’ pARTnership Movement essay, “Engage Your Employees,” focuses on the relationship between the arts and employee engagement–particularly how the arts can help with training and development. Mark Royal, a consultant at the management consulting firm Hay Group, says that engagement tends to be deeper among employees who feel that they have opportunities for growth and development. By partnering with arts organizations, companies can provide employees with innovative opportunities for growth and development, which can in turn have positive effects on engagement, morale, retention, and performance.

In February, Bloomberg’s job skills report showed that recruiters are struggling to find MBA talent who possess crucial communications, strategic thinking, leadership, and creative problem solving skills. Arts & Science Council's Cultural Leadership Training (CLT) Program and the Center of Creative Arts' COCAbiz program, among others, help business employees enhance these skills on the job. The programs also help businesses determine the leadership potential of their employees based on his or her interest in participating.

Through CLT, for example, business employees in Charlotte are trained to serve as volunteer board members for arts nonprofit organizations. They learn about governance, legal, and fiduciary responsibilities; they visit arts organizations and venues; and they engage in creative activities.

One participating employee from Wells Fargo claimed, “I feel proud to represent a company that has such a strong commitment to investing in team members and strengthening the communities where we do business. Wells Fargo demonstrated that commitment by giving me the opportunity to participate in programs such as Cultural Leadership Training, supporting me in my subsequent board service, and now providing me with additional leadership and development opportunities that allow me to deepen my involvement in the community.”

In St. Louis, COCAbiz focusing on leadership development, communication skills, creativity and ideation, and collaboration, through custom experiences for businesses. “People become experts at their jobs by doing the same thing many times. But repetition can lead people to get stuck in a cognitive rut where it becomes hard to see new perspectives,” explains Steve Knight, COCA’s Director. “We use artistic experiences as a way to help people escape from those mental ruts and rise above their normal routines to find new solutions and opportunities.”

Stephen Wurth, a participating design strategist at Nestlé Purina PetCare, claims COCAbiz helps companies boost engagement and stimulate creativity by using the arts to prod people out of their comfort zones and break down some of the rules, processes, and orthodoxies that typically govern corporate behavior. “Improvisation, comedy, choreography—all of these methods that get people out of their chairs and engaging with one another in meaningful ways can help break down barriers that people did not even know existed and drive greater collaboration,” he says.

If you had asked me a year out of college whether I would still be working for the same company a decade later, I would have said you were crazy,” says Wurth. “But Nestlé Purina’s commitment to supporting my personal growth has played a big role in keeping me here for 11 years now.”

Across the country, today’s most innovative businesses are using the arts to help them meet some of their most difficult and vital objectives. Learn from these examples in Americans for the Arts’ essays that profile successful arts and business partnerships from across the nation, including one that focuses on using arts partnerships to inspire and engage employees so that they are able to achieve their full potential.

View our complete listing of Employee Engagement blogs.