How engaged are your employees with their work, their company? How engaged are you? Engaged employees are motivated, involved in their work, satisfied with their jobs, committed to helping their organizations succeed. Gallup, known widely for its surveys of attitudes and behaviors (and increasingly for consulting analytics), measures employee engagement. Since the late 1990s over 25 million people in nearly 190 countries have completed the 12 items of their employee engagement survey. This year Gallup published “State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders”, which summarizes the findings from 2010-2012. This is latest report in an ongoing series compiling yearly surveys.
Based on the survey results, Gallup categorizes employees as (1) engaged, (2) not engaged, and (3) actively disengaged. Engaged employees are just that, motivated and positive about their organizations. Not engaged employees show up for work, do what is asked, but do not put passion or energy into their workplace activities. Gallup goes beyond the engaged/not engaged dichotomy with the “actively disengaged”, employees noticeably unhappy, more likely to skip work, are the source of more complaints.
So how engaged are U.S. employees? Over the past ten years the Gallup results have been fairly consistent. Only about 30% of employees are engaged. A little over 50% are not engaged. Slightly less than 20% are actively disengaged.
My take-away: These Gallup results suggest that there is significant room for improvement in the American workplace. Look around your workplace. Who is engaged? Disengaged? Actively disengaged? Can you tell the difference? The results Gallup reports cry out for leadership and management to step up. It is easy to be so overwhelmed fighting the daily alligators that we fail to be proactive, to understand what is happening in our workplaces, to find ways to elevate the work of those with whom we work. It would be interesting to see these results broken down by leadership style. My bet would be servant-leaders would have the most engaged employees. What is your leadership style? Do you want more engaged employees?
Image by Veronica Therese. Obtained from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenPlanRedBalloon1.jpg
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
Gallup (2013). State of the America workplace: Employee engagement insights for U.S. business leaders. Gallup Press.
Based on the survey results, Gallup categorizes employees as (1) engaged, (2) not engaged, and (3) actively disengaged. Engaged employees are just that, motivated and positive about their organizations. Not engaged employees show up for work, do what is asked, but do not put passion or energy into their workplace activities. Gallup goes beyond the engaged/not engaged dichotomy with the “actively disengaged”, employees noticeably unhappy, more likely to skip work, are the source of more complaints.
So how engaged are U.S. employees? Over the past ten years the Gallup results have been fairly consistent. Only about 30% of employees are engaged. A little over 50% are not engaged. Slightly less than 20% are actively disengaged.
My take-away: These Gallup results suggest that there is significant room for improvement in the American workplace. Look around your workplace. Who is engaged? Disengaged? Actively disengaged? Can you tell the difference? The results Gallup reports cry out for leadership and management to step up. It is easy to be so overwhelmed fighting the daily alligators that we fail to be proactive, to understand what is happening in our workplaces, to find ways to elevate the work of those with whom we work. It would be interesting to see these results broken down by leadership style. My bet would be servant-leaders would have the most engaged employees. What is your leadership style? Do you want more engaged employees?
Image by Veronica Therese. Obtained from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenPlanRedBalloon1.jpg
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
Gallup (2013). State of the America workplace: Employee engagement insights for U.S. business leaders. Gallup Press.
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