Enhancing Employee Engagement

Did you know US companies lose between $450-$550 billion every year due to disengaged employees? That’s a huge number… let’s break it down: a single disengaged employee can cost a company around $3,400 in lost productivity for every $10,000 in salary. So, if you’re paying a disengaged employee a yearly salary of $50,000, that’s $17,000 in lost profit annually. Considering the latest Gallup report shows 36% of employees are engaged, that’s a lot of potential lost profit!

There is good news however: employee engagement is actually at its highest level since Gallup started measuring back in 2000. In fact, in 2019 (pre-pandemic), only 35% of employees were engaged. This means that even in the aftermath of COVID-19, employee engagement levels are up.

This doesn’t mean it’s time to relax and stop worrying about keeping your employees engaged, however. Even though we’re all exhausted from the hardship of 2020, prioritizing employee engagement is just as important as ever – if not even more so. A unique threat all companies currently face is COVID burnout; regardless of how your team was impacted in 2020, it was an extremely difficult year with lots of challenges.

Gallup’s study also shows that companies with a highly engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability and 17% higher productivity. Improving engagement is a goal all companies should strive for, and working toward higher engagement rates is easier than you might think:

Make the most of internal communications. When company leaders share news regularly, employees feel motivated to achieve the mission, vision and goals because they feel more connected to them. In fact, studies show effective internal communications motivated 85% of employees to become more engaged. So share information such as press releases, event updates, company milestones and successful projects with your team regularly.

Take a look at company culture. While you might pride yourself on having an excellent corporate culture, there is always room for improvement somewhere. Continually working to improve company culture will boost job satisfaction, employee retention and workforce engagement… which all adds up to increased profitability.

Understand what motivates your employees. Different members of your team will have different motivations, but once you understand what those motivations are, it’s easy to utilize them to improve engagement. 37% of employees feel most encouraged by personal recognition – a simple “thank you” can go a long way. If someone goes the extra mile, be sure to recognize that publicly (if that’s something they’re comfortable with. Some people prefer private recognition, and that’s just fine too!) Monetary incentives are always good motivators, but are even more effective when supplemented by appropriate personal recognition and smaller gestures.

Be a coach, not a boss. Millions of professionals started working from home in 2020, with a large percentage still not back in the office full time and some that will never go back. Employers were forced to empower employees to work more autonomously, with mostly good results. Now that we’re in the aftermath of the pandemic, there’s opportunity to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Companies had to move managers from a boss mentality to a coaching mentality to ensure good results while working remotely; regardless of how (or where) your workforce is now operating, it’s now proven that employees engage better with a coaching mentality than with an “I’m the boss” approach.

Now is the perfect time to focus on enhancing your employee engagement. Whether you have high engagement already, or need to work with some actively disengaged employees, improving your team’s engagement is not only beneficial for your company culture, but also for employee satisfaction and retention – not to mention productivity and profitability.