By Martin Luenendonk
Here’s a fun fact: The song Working for the Weekend by Canadian rock band Loverboy still appears on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s. What’s this got to do with employee engagement?
The fact that the song is still ranked in this list shows that there’s still a lot of people who feel a connection to the lyrics of the song and who are always waiting for the weekend.
In other words, majority of employees are disengaged at work and are always looking for the next opportunity to spend some time away from work.
Employee engagement is a very important factor to the success of any company, and unfortunately, it has become a huge problem in today’s workplace, impacting everything from productivity to customer satisfaction.
According to the Deloitte Review, American companies spend over $100 billion every year in a bid to improve employee engagement.
Sadly, all this expenditure does not seem to making much of an impact, considering that a separate poll by Gallup shows that only slightly more than one third of employees (34%) are engaged at work.
While this is an improvement from previous years, the number is still quite low.
To help employers gain a better understanding of employee engagement and its impact on companies, we are going to take a look at 10 shocking statistics on employee engagement. Before we get to that, however, let’s take a moment to understand what employee engagement means.
WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT?
Employee engagement refers to how connected an employee is to their job and the level of emotional commitment they have to the organization and its goals.
Engaged employees care about their work, rather than simply working for the paycheck at the end of the month.
Disengaged employees, on the other hand, do not care about their job or how it contributes to the organizational goals.
They only care about the benefits they get from their job, such as a paycheck, a promotion, and so on. They are not enthusiastic about their job and will never go above and beyond in their duty for the sake of the company.
To make it easier to distinguish between engaged and disengaged employees, I’ll use an illustration.
Assume there are two guys, Pete and Mike, who work in the IT department.
One day, a couple minutes just before the end of the work day, they both notice that there is glitch that would make the company network vulnerable to external attacks.
After checking the magnitude of the problem, Pete realizes that it will take at least one and a half hours to solve the problem.
Since he was almost getting done for the day, he decides to pretend that he hasn’t noticed the glitch to avoid working overtime.
Mike, on the other hand, understands that there is a huge risk in leaving the glitch unresolved overnight.
Instead of leaving the problem until the following day, he spends an extra hour and a half at the office resolving the problem.
Mike does not gain anything by spending the extra time at the office, but he still does it because he cares about his job and its impact on the entire organization. In other words, he is an engaged employee.
Pete, on the other hand, is disengaged and is not willing to sacrifice his personal time for the organization.
He does not care much about the organization, he only cares about the money in his account at the end of the month.
It’s good to note that there is a difference between employee engagement and employee satisfaction. Very often, many managers confuse between the two.
Employee satisfaction simply focuses on how contented or happy employees are with their job.
It does not address how motivated, committed or involved they are. Just because an employee is happy with their job doesn’t mean that they are engaged at work.
Actually, to some employees, being happy with their job might mean doing as little as possible.
Now that you understand what employee engagement means, let’s look at 10 shocking statistics on employee engagement. Check out the full guide here: https://www.cleverism.com/10-shocking-stats-about-employee-engagement/
