Vacant or engaged?
Disengagement causes the mind to wander. Six statistics on the links between employee engagement and productivity.
When you’re asking (telling) people to get on with it and not ask too many questions, tasks can get done quickly. For a short period of time.
When people are treated as cogs in a machine they will obey and get on with the task in hand if they’re capable. At least right up until the point when they start questioning things either themselves or with colleagues. Then they begin to question, to challenge and to imagine, and you have a choice. Do you crack the whip, explain who’s boss and keep them disassociated from the master plan, or do you engage them and build a culture through your team of engagement?
The difference is small in terms of cost and physical work, but huge in terms of meaning and profit. Research proves that engaged staff members consistently improve business performance. Here are some statistics you might find interesting. We’ll be investigating these further at Gearing up for Growth.
- 51% of all employees in the UK are disengaged at work. Here’s what that means to you financially:
- UK Companies with worse than average employee disengagement suffer 62% more accidents, 230% more employee sick days and 50% more ‘inventory shrinkage’
- Managers at companies in the UK with average engagement or worse spent more than 200% more time on issues of discipline and re-recruitment
- The Corporate Leadership Council in the US reports that companies concentrating on engagement have reported an average of an 87% reduction in staff turnover and a 20% improvement in staff performance measured against internal KPIs
- Back in the UK, 6% (one in 17 employees) is actively engaged in ‘hostile’ behaviours towards their employers
- More positively, organisations with higher than average staff engagement enjoyed 12% more customer advocacy, 18% higher productivity and averaged 12% higher profitability
(Figures from polls and research undertaken by Gallup, the UK Work Organisation Network, and the Hays Group)
Employee engagement is cheap to achieve (sorry, no quantifiable stats on this – all relative). It makes everyone’s lives easier and more enjoyable, and will help you to increase revenues and profits too (see above stats). Engagement is a fundamental human requirement – when we don’t know we question,
As creating employee engagement is largely a by product of outstanding organisational leadership, it turns out that it’s therefore a choice – your choice – as to whether your people are providing you with their best, most productive work.
