Engaging people through storytelling to become an employer of choice in the knowledge era

ENGLISH SUMMARY: Business leaders of today agree that people are the greatest asset of their enterprises, but they struggle to live up to the requirements the knowledge specialists of today dictate. This study investigates the method of storytelling as a leadership tool to engage people in businesses and to contribute to such businesses in becoming an Employer of Choice.In the present day knowledge era the way we communicate has changed completely andknowledge has become the single most important factor within businesses. The latter, inconjunction with the technology boom, has led to an extremely fast paced businessenvironment worldwide, leaving the knowledge experts feeling somehow alienated.Business leaders need to understand this phenomenon and incorporate a culture of carewithin the business. It is easy to overlook the least troublesome, uncomplicated andinexpensive ways of communications, such as storytelling, to add value in creating abusiness environment of such a nature. South African businesses should tap into thewisdom of the Ubuntu culture that has its roots deep in storytelling as a method ofknowledge sharing and to foster development.The objective of this research document is to illustrate the relationship between storytellingand engaging employees and retaining talent by means of which management could gain abetter overview of how their implementation of a storytelling culture in the business couldaffect their customer retention in the relevant business.