Employee Engagement

“Employee engagement”. 

That phrase floats through the air in just about every boardroom across the nation.  “We need to increase employee engagement”.   What does employee engagement actually mean? Is it something that can be bought with a pizza party? It seems to be this pot of gold at the end of a rainbow which a few companies have in spades, while the rest of the working world struggles to find it.  Gallup defines employee engagement as: “involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their workplace.”

“Involvement” can be easier to measure in some industries than others.  Productivity, output, and other tangible contributions, etc.  However, “enthusiasm” is a tougher one to measure.  Being a social butterfly and “popular” at work should not be the measure of success in this indicator.  Many high quality (I might even argue your best employees in many cases) go about their day, not making a fuss, doing what is expected of them, and carrying an attitude of gratitude and service to others wherever they go.  Enthusiasm therefore shouldn’t only be quantified by the loudest, most “forward” personalities.

When we combine these two factors into one word: Engagement, what other elements need to be added to this secret sauce? What is their perspective on the company culture, the mission, and how it treats its customer base? What is the employee saying about their place of work when they’re not put on the spot, but perhaps talking about their job to friends at a social event?  How do they feel when they walk in to work and start their day? What is the less tangible evidence of a satisfied employee and how do you capture it?

According to employee engagement statistics from teambuilding.com, only 15% of employees feel engaged in the workplace, 73% would leave for the right offer, but somehow only 12% leave their current role for better pay of the 89% who believe that is the reason they left. 

Conversely, safety incidents are 70% lower in companies with high engagement, and companies reporting high engagement have 89% higher customer satisfaction. 

So, what drives employee engagement? Is it only money?

No.  It’s culture. 

Hands down, the main driver of employee engagement is alignment with organizational mission and values as well as trust in senior leadership.  These two main factors drive the development of organizational culture.

Wait…where’s salary?! I thought that was the main driver for retention and turnover rates?

According to MIT Sloan Management Review (1), the one thing that is ten times more likely than salary to impact turnover is a toxic work culture. Toxic work culture includes things such as incongruence with the organizational mission, gossiping, unequal treatment of employees, disengaged or absent managers, interactions which create mistrust of leadership, and so on.

OK, so what can be done?!

First, every organization out there MUST invest in their leaders.  Your leaders are the cornerstone of building and maintaining company culture. These individuals hold the success or failure of your organization in their hands, and that is not being overdramatic.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole:  If your managers are not equipped to do their jobs, you have loss of productivity through inability to see trends, train staff, and innovate. Decreased productivity leads to decreased customer satisfaction.  Those customers take it out on your team.  Your team goes to their manager, who is ill-equipped to support them, and the employee now becomes dis-engaged.  That employee, who is the face of our organization, now no longer provides excellent customer service.  The manager writes the employee up, and engagement drops further. Then, they quit. Now you have to invest in hiring and training a new employee, which you entrust to the prior mentioned manager. You have setbacks, inefficiencies, and increased costs through recruitment, hiring, and training lag times.

Now, let’s consider that you invested in your manager, and provided tools for them to become a leader in your organization, not just a manager.  They are learning how to not only see trends, train staff, and innovate, but they are also able to inspire, motivate, support, empower, and guide the culture of the organization.  Employee satisfaction goes up, they go out of their way to help customers because they feel invested in the organization’s mission.  Retention goes up, hiring costs go down, customer satisfaction goes up, complaints go down, efficiencies go up, wasted time goes way down.  All of this impacts your bottom line.

2020 saw many drastic changes across the world. 2021 and 2022 were the toughest years for most organizational cultures in the history of their organization. In 2024, we are still struggling to find the balance between rising costs and investing in our future.  I’m here to tell you that Leadership & Development is the one area you cannot afford to limit your time and resources as we navigate these new waters.

According to a 2024 report by World Metrics (2):

• 80% of employees feel more engaged when their work is consistent with the company's mission and values.
• 61% of employees cite trust in and with senior management as important to their satisfaction.
• 88% of employees believe a strong company culture is key to business success.

The best advice I can give is to support and invest in your leaders, and prioritize a culture of transparency, open communication, and congruence with your organizational mission.   Employees WILL work for an organization that may not be the top salary in the industry (I am not posing an argument for unfair or unequal pay by any means – I am a strong advocate for proper compensation to meet the industry standards), as long as that workplace has a healthy and supportive culture. 

The most successful way to create such a workplace is through investing in your leaders.  Help them grow, show them their contributions are important, and they will do the same for your employees.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/the-biggest-reason-people-quit-is-10-times-more-important-than-pay.html?msockid=2395d3fe84d7690d2a91c1d285646857
2. https://worldmetrics.org/employee-engagement-statistics/