You might want to check out your brand’s recruiting program to help you judge the engagement level at your office. I’ve had a number of brands talk with me in the last few months about how they’re either losing good people or not attracting the same caliber of person that they’re used to having apply for jobs.

We’ve been talking with leadership and employees at brands that are having people who they kept on through the recession leave for other opportunities. “This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” employees are telling leadership. “I’ve worked really hard for you for a long time, and now I want to explore my options.” Leadership is telling us that they expected people to leave, but not these people. “We need to keep the people we have right now,” said one manager. “We’ve got to start engaging them.”

This dynamic is part of the legacy of a recession. Leadership has been focused on the numbers for the last couple of years. Employees have had their noses to the grindstone to execute work handed to them.

In both cases, people are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and making changes accordingly, meaning that leadership is turning up the focus on engagement and employees are becoming more discerning about their current work situations.

If you’re seeing a trickle in qualified applicants, or people aren’t banging on your door anymore to see if there are jobs, then you might want to explore the issue further to make sure you’re competitively set for the future.