Industry Research: The State of Employee Engagement in 2018

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Employee engagement is a critical business issue in today’s Knowledge-Based economy. It’s that piece of talent management that truly touches every area of an organization, yet is one of the most difficult issues to address in the workplace. For years, studies have highlighted the dismal statistics of disengaged employees and the collateral damage it has caused on productivity and profit. There is no question that organizations are struggling to keep their workforce actively engaged and optimally productive. This real, but illusive business problem is costing companies anywhere from $450-500 billion each year. While we brainstorm solutions and attempt to roll out experiments to address the issue, disengaged employees are searching for other opportunities and costing their employers money.
 

So what’s the solution to effectively engaging employees? How do we solve a problem that has plagued the world of work for years? Before we offer the solution, let’s try to clearly identify the real problem of employee engagement.

The State of Employee Engagement

Over a third of companies are naming engagement as their number one business challenge, and our research commissioned from HR.com shows that in the last two years, 34% of surveyed leaders report engagement has remained the same, while 30% have seen only a 1-5% increase. Frighteningly, 21% cite a measured decrease in engaged employees. Over half of those surveyed are either stagnant or decreasing their ability to cultivate engaged employees.

Nearly 39% of the leaders in our survey believe less than half of their organization is engaged. And because 47% of organizations don’t measure their employee engagement, that number is most certainly even larger. A lack of engagement measurement also means a lack of accountability. The organizations surveyed may be prioritizing employee engagement, but any efforts they’re rolling out to engage their workforce are not being calculated or measured.

Evaluating the Way We Measure Engagement

With disengagement clearly linked to increased turnover and decreased satisfaction, there’s simply no way to ignore the problem any longer. That includes failing to measure effectiveness of programs or employee engagement in general. The first step in making a change requires accountability, while collecting and monitoring data will be an important guide during the journey toward an engaged workforce.

Our survey found that a majority (77%) of those who do measure employee engagement use formal employee surveys, which can give you the basic pulse of the workforce. What isn’t so encouraging is that (52%) of the insightful information to employee engagement comes from exit interviews. Obviously exiting employees are a little more candid, but relying on turnover to get an idea of your company’s employee engagement is not a great strategy for collecting important engagement data. Especially when you consider that employee turnover racks up an estimated $11 billion in losses for organizations.

Thankfully, 37% of participants are starting to consider their performance management system and process as a consistent and reliable source for engagement data. A good Performance Management System, and other HRIS that monitor real-time productivity, allows leadership to notice trends that can be correlated to events or changes that could impact their business.

The Fool’s Gold of Engagement

There are more than a few ways that an employee engagement problem can be approached, but not effectively addressed. Organizations might hopelessly try to turn their employee lounge into a pool hall or video arcade, offer alluring vacations to an Executive’s Condo in exotic locations, or more frequent invites to happy hours at the local micro-brewery as an attempt to build culture for young professionals. But, while those offerings may produce some savvy pictures and social media hashtags, it doesn’t really move the needle on engagement. That’s because 72% of respondents believe organizational culture relates highly to their organization’s level of employee engagement. While they’re right that culture is a factor, how that culture is built is not one-size-fits-all. Yes, millennials are having a significant impact on the workforce right now, but we may be assuming that they are only motivated by game rooms.

The Engagement Code

At the end of the day, all professionals, regardless of their generation, are interested in cultivating meaningful and successful careers. In fact, 66% of today’s workforce believes opportunities for career growth is intimately linked to engagement. When employees come to work and focus on the things that they have the skills and passion to contribute to, while seeing the positive impact it has on their organization and their clients, they are innately engaged.

One to the most important yet neglected individual or leadership skill, to cultivate meaning and purpose as work is the art of effective goal setting. While it’s not sexy or easy, writing effective goals is the natural solution to cracking the engagement code. Setting and pursuing clear and concise goals inspires an individual’s intentional actions and behaviors toward achieving those goals, and brings meaning and purpose to the work they perform on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis. In short, effective goal setting and collaborating toward achievement of goals significantly increases the intentions of individual’s to stay, endorse, and perform at highly levels (The Ken Blanchard Companies, Employee Work Passion). Goal setting is the foundational leadership skill that every leader needs to take seriously when attempting to optimally engaging their team members.

Goal setting helps managers to understand what motivates employees to make significant contributions and creates a healthy environment for collaboration. When leaders discover what is important to individuals and where they can make the most impact, they can align skills and motivation to organizational goals, and their overall professional development. When 89% of employees think it’s important that their employers support their learning and development, it’s important to create a positive goal setting culture where individuals can align their personal passion with the objectives of the organization.

At the most basic level, employee engagement is driven by motivation and motivation is supported by aligned purpose. Knowing all this, we can safely assume that collaborative goal setting and development can make amazingly positive strides for the greater employee engagement problem we see in the world at work. And that is exactly how Inspire Software came to be. Our product sustains and supports goal alignment and leadership development by organizing individual goals, drawing connections to organizational values, and measuring progress. Inspire opens the door to better collaboration between leader and employee so achievements are associated with company strategy. Success is everyone’s goal and responsibility.

Ready to finally solve the employee engagement situation? Take a look at how Inspire Software’s leadership development program can help your organization better align employee goals and manage company performance.

Author Bio

Jason Arnold joined the Inspire team in 2015 to help integrate leadership philosophy into the Inspire software and introduce a new approach, Leadership as a Service, to the leadership development market. He comes to the Inspire product with 15 plus years of experience training and developing leadership concepts in the classroom and virtual learning platforms. He has been mentored by some of the most recognized leadership and business book authors in the leadership development industry and is an experience professional leadership facilitator and instructional designer in leadership theory and application. Connect Inspire Software Visit https://inspiresoftware.com