78% of business leaders rated retention and engagement urgent or important, according to the 2014 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report.
70% of employees in the USA are either ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ costing huge amounts in lost productivity, and worse still, the number of people not engaged Worldwide was 87%.
Additionally, a 2015 Gallup poll revealed a strong correlation between engagement and employee health.
The poll participants reported the following:
• Physical pain: 23% (disengaged); 14% (engaged)
• Stress: 56% (disengaged); 32% (engaged)
• High blood pressure: 19% (disengaged); 15% (engaged)
• High cholesterol: 15% (disengaged); 11% (engaged)
• Depression: 16% (disengaged); 9% (engaged)
So what’s going on?
Is it possible that too many companies have old-school thinking leaders? Are the initiatives most companies put in place a waste of time/money/energy? Is there something deeper going on?
Whatever the answer is, there is clear scope for improvement.
What Are Companies Getting Wrong?
According to Gallup, the biggest issue by far is that companies treat engagement as a one-time event rather than an ongoing process. They may conduct a ‘survey’ once a year but it often stops there. Once a year is certainly not enough to be gaining a true understanding of an employee’s engagement, nor is just conducting a survey. It needs to be on going; you need to measure it, improve it and act on it.
It is also found that companies will create surveys that only initiate answers they want to hear, instead of uncovering deeper issues.
What should Companies and Leaders be doing?
1. A key component of engagement is “feeling cared about”
Leaders can make a large difference in their employees’ lives by including well-being principles in their company’s engagement programmes. This adds depth to the “feeling of being cared about”.
Companies can do this by:
- Strongly encouraging participation in well-being activities when setting job expectations.
- Allow their ‘opinions to count’ by soliciting employee ideas and incorporate them
- Recognise and show appreciation of their day-to-day efforts by saying thank you. For example, either verbally, on a social collaboration tool or leaving a thank you note on their desk.
- Recognising and rewarding employees for their loyalty to the organisation. E.g. when someone has completed 5 years with you
- When recognising them for an achievement, treat them with something that is tailored to their interests.
- Celebrate milestones, birthdays and seasonal holidays
2. Collect frequent feedback and act on it.
3. Offer development – both professional and personal development are key driving forces to keeping an employees engaged and ‘in-motion’ towards not only the company’s goals but also their own – creating an all-round balanced employee.
4. Communicate your vision – Bryan Kramer, CEO and Founder of PureMatter, recently visited Tesla Motors. He received a tour of the entire factory, which covers 54 million square feet. The company is building 1,000 cars a week. He asked every single person why he or she works there, and the consensus was that they all want to rid cars of the need for gas. Every employee, without exception, was clear about that distinct vision.
“My whole point on that is that Tesla instilled a culture of automation within the context of building cars,” says Kramer. “They are all building the same car, 1,000 of them a week, yet they all know that they are ridding the world of the need for gas.”
The reason the culture was consistent and clear was because of leadership. “It must start from the top,” says Mike Haberman, Consultant and Partner at Omega HR Solutions Inc. “Because if the person leading the company doesn’t have that purpose, your employees are not going to have that purpose.”
Final thoughts
Don’t let lack of employee engagement ruin your company’s chance to move onwards and upwards. Start creating, cultivating and nurturing an environment for success – for everyone.
