In businesses struggling to do more with less, one key to productivity is often overlooked: Employee engagement, or an employee's emotional and intellectual commitment to their organisation.
In their 2008 'Q12 Survey' of 1000 employees in Australia, The Gallup Organisation found that 79% of workers were not engaged or were actively disengaged. Gallup estimated this represented a productivity loss to the nation of around $42 billion annually, which can be translated to lower potential profitability at the individual business level.
An engaged employee is passionate about what they do and will drive innovation to move the organisation forward. Actively disengaged employees are unhappy and don't really care who knows it - they will undermine what engaged people are trying to accomplish.
In the middle are those who are not engaged. These employees are not adding to business growth. They are happy to collect their pay, as long as they don't have to put in too much extra effort to get it. In most businesses, this represents the majority of employees (6 out of 10), and there will be one actively disengaged employee for every engaged employee.
So how do you know if your employees are engaged?
If you're wondering about engagement levels in your business, consider what your team's responses might be to twelve questions Gallup asked employees:
1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
9. Are your fellow employees committed to doing quality work?
10. Do you have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
Tip: The beauty of these questions is that you don't even have to ask your employees for their responses. Simply reflecting on what their answers might be will give you a plenty of useful information you can act on now to start making the changes necessary to have more engaged employees.
Action: Choose one thing you can do now to engage your staff.
