State of the Industry Research: A Report Card on Employee Engagement in 2018

Leverage leadership and culture to maximize engagement

Survey conducted by HR.com

 

Employees are the backbone of any organization. Most HR professionals believe that employee engagement results in higher productivity. That’s why so much effort has been poured into engagement in recent years. However, where exactly do employee engagement practices stand today?
 
To learn more about the state of employee engagement today, we surveyed 717 HR.com members, who work in the HR profession and related fields.
 
Check out our report highlights:

 
How Engaged Are Today’s Employees?
Our survey explored respondents’ opinions on the current state of employee engagement in their organizations. When an employee gives his/her best at work, he/she is believed to be highly engaged. This can also be called discretionary effort. In this study, we asked participants about the degree to which employees put forward such effort. Only 9% strongly agreed that their employees do, another 35% agreed. This indicates that most employers still face major employee engagement challenges.
 

It turns out HR professionals tend to believe that large swaths of their organization are not engaged. In fact, only about a third of respondents said that 70% or more employees are engaged. Like the discretionary effort question, this one also indicates that most employers could be doing much better in the area of employee engagement.


                                                  
 
Employee Engagement and Performance
Over the past 20 years, a variety of studies have indicated that there is  a correlation between employee engagement and organizational performance. Similarly, over 90% of the respondents believe there is solid evidence linking engagement to performance. Study participants view engagement as having a positive impact on a number of performance indicators. Productivity and customer service were the areas where there was the greatest perceived impact, although two-thirds also stated that engagement has an impact on financial performance to a high or very high degree.
 
What Drives Engagement?
About three-quarters of respondents believe engagement is highly linked to supervisory relationships, leadership trust, and organizational culture. The top two factors fall clearly into the realm of leadership. To be engaged, employees must trust leadership.
 
Organizational culture, of course, is largely driven by leadership, but it includes a wide variety of other factors, from organizational values and norms to typical behaviors of organizational members.
 
 
                                              
Another survey finding supports the notion that leaders bear most of the responsibility of improving employee engagement. What’s interesting is that top leaders bear about as much responsibility as immediate supervisors, which challenges some of the conventional wisdom in the area of engagement.
 
Leadership skills are the primary differentiators between highly engaged organizations and average organizations. Whereas only 39% of average organizations say their senior leaders prioritize engagement, the same is true for 56% of more highly engaged organizations.  
This data suggests that improving leader priorities and skills sets are the key to raising employee engagement levels. Few people have the innate skills required to be stellar managers. Leadership development is, therefore, one of HR’s biggest challenge, but it is also a golden opportunity to help their organizations boost organizational performance.
 
How Do Organizations Measure Engagement?
Only about half of respondents say their organizations measure engagement, with the largest organizations being most likely to measure it. This raises the issue of why more organizations don’t measure it.
 
Leaders of smaller organizations may be more likely to feel that they are in touch with their employees and do not need surveys or other measurements to tell them what they already know. Others may feel that engagement is low and do not want to call attention to it.
 
Organizations are experimenting with new ways to get more frequent and better-focused employee feedback. The use of more frequent surveys is receiving much attention, but organizations must find the right balance.
 
Even in organizations where management hasn’t yet grasped the importance of employee engagement, the HR team can form and execute a long-term plan to improve organizational culture and the practices that support employee engagement. Changing a culture takes time, of course, even with the enthusiastic support of senior leadership. For more insights and key takeaways from the research, read the complete report.