“There’s no company loyalty anymore so why should I have any”? I have often heard this refrain from worker bees. Personally, I don’t think companies have ever shown loyalty to their employees and vice versa. More on that later. Last quarters US Labor statistics said productivity continues to decline. What are you getting for the wages you are paying workers? If wages continue to increase and productivity is falling does that make good business sense?
When I read these productivity statistics, they also mentioned that employee engagement was lower. Intrigued, I did some research. The definition of an engaged employee was one who feels connected to their organization, works harder, stays longer, and motivate others to do the same. I also found out Gallup does a poll on employee engagement and that after trending up in recent years, employee engagement in the U.S. saw its first annual decline in a decade dropping from 36% engaged employees in 2020 to 34% in 2021. [Gallup]. It may have dropped only 2 percent but ONLY 34% of employees responded as engaged with their work, OUCH.
You can find a number of surveys with varying percentages of employee engagement; however, the bottom line is they all show low percentages of employee engagement. As a company Leader you have to ask yourself what are you getting for your money from employees? Have you asked your Human Resources group what the level of employee engagement is at your organization? You would think with the labor shortage and open jobs that organizations would start to look at engagement as a critical bottom line issue for their company. Who should lead the effort to find out?
First let me address ‘company loyalty’. I commented earlier that I frequently hear from employees that companies don’t show loyalty to their employees anymore like they used to. I don’t think most companies ever did. Prior to the 70’s when we started the major influx of women into the workforce companies had to ‘put up with a lot of things from employees (mostly males) because of economic growth and shortages in the labor pool. With the increasing number of women and the overall size in (baby boomers) the labor pool companies ‘loyalty’ disappeared due to the supply in the labor pool. With a labor shortage in any industrial segment, we see labor moving to the ‘highest’ bidder. I call it a draw; each side has their own motives for ‘showing’ loyalty/engagement.
Engagement is really a measure or look at individual employees and how well do they know what their job/role is, what the goals/objectives they are expected to achieve and how motivated are they to achieve them. A person can be ‘engaged’ without being ‘loyal’. Also, I don’t think loyalty and engagement are synonymous. You may be able to survey loyalty but it’s almost impossible to attach it to concrete drivers of organizational results. Engagement is different.
Is there a correlation between engagement and business outcomes? Quantum Workplace found that 92% of business executives believe that engaged employees perform better, boosting the success of their teams and the outcomes of their organization. If you look at their global information on the 10 metrics of employee engagement [officevibe] they seem to follow common sense business practices and don’t involve spending large sums of money to foster engagement. There’s a lot of information out there about how to improve employee engagement, some credible, some not and Human Resources leaders have probably seen and heard about a number of them.
I agree that engaged employees have a positive impact on business outcomes and Leaders need to pay attention to how engaged their employees are. Leaders need to ask themselves some hard questions. First and foremost is what is your personal attitude towards employees in general? How does your organizational policies and procedures reinforce this attitude or conflict? [SMB] What is my ROI for a ‘kind of engaged’ employee? When does a disengaged employee tip over to a destructive employee? Who is responsible to lead an audit and changes to the organization, Human Resources, or the Leader of the organization? How do you NOT make improving employee engagement a program?