A radically different approach to employee engagement

We all know that employee engagement is important, and organisations spend billions of dollars every year on employee engagement surveys and actions, so how come only 21% of people are fully engaged at work?

Highly engaged people bring 21% higher productivity, 30% lower turnover, 41% less absenteeism, and improvements in customer satisfaction, innovation, and wellbeing. Achieving a high level of employee engagement is a business imperative.

Since Gallup introduced their engagement survey in 2009, tens of thousands of companies around the world have run annual surveys and spent billions of dollars each year on initiatives to improve their employee engagement. Many of the managers we meet have employee engagement objectives and targets and many HR people spend a lot of their time puzzling around how to improve engagement.

Engagement has improved over the 13 years of the Gallup survey, but far too slowly. The 2022 Gallup Global Workplace survey in 2022 found that still only 21% of people were engaged at work, 60% are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable.

Each year engagement surveys show areas to improve, and HR departments and leaders get more and more actions that they need to take to improve the engagement of their people.

We think it’s time for a radically different approach, based on the realisation that engagement is not something we can create in others; it is something that comes from within.

Leaders can create an environment in which people can engage themselves, but they can’t do it for them. Instead of focusing just on what the 10% of leaders can do for others, we believe in enrolling all individuals in engaging themselves.

Engagement is not just a leadership challenge; it is a crisis in lost human potential and happiness.

Most of us spend 40% of our waking hours for over 40 years at work. If we are not happy at work, then we have no possibility of a truly engaged and happy life. Being able to blame our leaders for an unhappy and disengaged life is no consolation.

Engagement is really a win/win for organisations and individuals, and we believe in giving all individuals the sense of ownership and the tools they need to improve their own engagement and happiness at work.

We have developed a series of workshops to give people practical tools to increase their own engagement in four key areas

1. Take ownership for your own engagement – why engagement is in everyone’s interest
2. Find your purpose and meaning at work – understanding your values, strengths, passions, and purpose and how to connect them to your work
3. Evolve your tasks, relationship, and mindset at work to increase engagement
4. Apply seven principles for unleashing your own engagement at work

Instead of a just a top-down approach of leaders driving employee engagement, why not engage everyone in creating their own engagement?

If you are a HR person or leader wanting to empower your people to be more engaged, please get in touch and we will send you our white paper on this subject.