I think we can all agree that employees who are Highly Engaged in our business and their role in our business are highly desirable. However, how can we know how many (if any) of our team members are Highly Engaged? Well, a recent Gallup poll (2017) found that only 13% of employees world-wide are Highly Engaged and over twice that many, 27%, are Highly Disengaged. The remainder, the Disengaged, are simply along for the ride.
So what do “Highly Engaged” employees look like? Well, first of all, they are emotionally connected to your business. They buy into your Vision, Mission and Culture if you have one, and if you don’t have those your number of Highly Engaged Employees goes to zero quite fast. Highly Engaged employees are also collaborative and innovative. Does your work environment allow, encourage and foster that way of working? Or do strict rules and processes and outdated management styles stifle, or even worse, punish these characteristics?
Highly Engaged employees do the bulk of the productive (profitable) work in a consistent and sustainable way for you and pull all the dead weight (the Disengaged) along for the ride. The Highly Disengaged are your business’s anchors, holding everyone else back and costing you money every hour they work for you.
Further analysis of the data by Gallup calculates that the loss of productivity from Disengaged and Highly Disengaged employees is 34% of their salary! How long can you afford to lose 34% of the salaries of 87% of your team? If you are like most businesses, that model is unsustainable. These losses are both lost productivity from employees only going through the motions, and the costs of replacing the Highly Engaged employees who leave because they can’t stand it anymore. So what can you do to help your team become more engaged in your business? Well, there are four key areas to look at and improve to create an environment that encourages higher levels of engagement.
The first is Purpose – make sure every team member knows, understands, and lives the Vision, Mission, and Core Values/Culture of your company. Make sure they understand their role and your expectations of them. Second is creating a Culture of Excellence, rather than the typical culture of “Do Just Enough”. The third is creating a supportive culture, where leaders and peers alike have each other’s back. The fourth and last key is to create a culture that looks forward, challenges people to grow, to innovate, to continually improve. This creates lasting confidence in their ability to continue to thrive as part of your team.
To sum it all up, it takes an Engaged Workforce to Grow your Business. What are you doing to create one? For a Free Team Engagement Survey, go to Engage and Grow to request your confidential assessment.
Author: Mark McNulty, Louisville Business Coach
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