Growthcoaching

How engaged are your people?

Research suggests that just 30% of people in the average business are actively engaged in supporting and growing it.

That means that as many as 7 out of 10 people could be just coasting along, and some, by their lack of commitment, might even be undermining growth plans!

Engagement is the discretionary effort organisations generate from their employees, that is, people behaving in ways that further the interests of the team/group and/or organisation. If people are not engaged, or worse actively dis-engaged, they aren't contributing to the growth, productivity and profitability of the enterprise.

Just imagine the cost of employing almost 3/4 of the workforce, and not getting a worthwhile contribution from that investment!

And yet increasing engagement for a large proportion of your people is a relatively simple matter.

Engaged employees are people who work with passion and a strong emotional connection to their company; they're the people that grow the business.

They commit time and effort to help it succeed, and are ready to recommend the organisation to others.  Most often they are motivated by factors like personal growth, working to a common purpose, or being being a part of some larger process, rather than extrinsic (hygiene) factors like pay, holidays etc.

Non-engaged employees (about 50% of the total), often concentrate on tasks other than the goals and outcomes they are expected to accomplish, requiring work targets and rarely taking initiatives. The focus is on completing the task rather than achieving a meaningful outcome.

Paradoxically, taking a task centred approach to non-engaged employees (often the preferred solution by managers seeking to improve performance), tends to reinforce their non-engaged behaviour, rather than engaging the heart, mind, and soul of that employee, as might be expected.

Actively disengaged employees (the remaining 20%) undermine the work of others and spread discontentment because they express their mistrust and animosity and are generally indifferent to company goals and mission. They often feel their potential is left untapped and their contribution overlooked, mostly because they feel they don't have productive relationships with managers or co-workers.

(Interestingly, actively disengaged employees often do have enormous untapped potential; their lack of engagement being driven by a perceived lack of appreciation of their potential or, in some cases, the lack of effective management of their capabilities).

Such employees feel disconnected emotionally from co-workers and lack commitment to their work, team/role and the organisation. They will typically withdraw and do the minimum required, feeling their contribution counts for little. The initiatives around role profiling and talent management, are intended to provide the basis for addressing all these issues and moving the actively disengaged to, at the very least, non-engaged, and the non-engaged to fully engaged.

It is the crucially important role and remit of managers to create a workforce of fully engaged employees at all levels in the organisation, so that they in turn increase the level of fully engaged customers, assuring the continued growth and profitability of the business.