Disengaged Employees? Here’s How to Create Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today. Why? Because disengaged employees are costing you and your business lost productivity, profits and customers.

What is employee engagement? It is a business management concept. An engaged employee is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work and thus will act in a way that furthers the organization’s interests.

The results for the 2010 Gallup study on Employee engagement are out …AND they are disturbing. First the good news – 29% of employees were shown to be actively engaged. Why is that good news? The data indicates that engaged employees:

-have a 70% higher productivity rate,
-generate 44% more profit, and
-show an 85% increase in Customer Satisfaction.

17% of employees are actively disengaged. These are typically the people you need to manage out of the business. The bad news – 54% of employees are NOT ENGAGED! Imagine the possibilities and business impact if you could shift just 5 or 10% of these employees to a state of active engagement.

There are many articles out there about creating Employee Engagement programs and a “Culture of Engagement”. While they can certainly provide insight, tools and tips, let’s face it, employee engagement is about relationship. No sustainable change occurs without relationship. People aren’t engaged by programs. People are engaged by people. If you want to create more engaged employees, start by looking at Your Leadership and Your Managers.

Businesses spend a lot of time training people on the technical skills required for the job and we readily invest in ourselves and our managers to keep the technical skills current. When was the last time you invested in yourself or your managers to develop the kinds of skills you need to inspire and engage employees? Individual one-on-one coaching programs or workshops/ seminars around communication skills, delegation and empowerment, accountability, collaboration and coaching skills can all be useful tools to enhance your and your Managers’ abilities to engage employees. So, for the good of your company, please face the music and start working the real issue.