I'm obsessed with making the workplace better for everyone.
Why? On average, we spend 3,515 days at work, just under ten years!
An engaged workforce can increase productivity, job satisfaction, sales, and revenue. We will likely go the extra mile to achieve our company's goals when engaged in our work.
Now, I want to ask you a question. Are you doing everything you can to foster employee engagement in your organisation?
Here are my top 10 employee engagement statistics and strategies to support your journey.
What is employee engagement?
According to a Forbes article, the definition of employee engagement is:
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.
What I like about this article is the contrast of employee engagement with employee happiness and satisfaction. It states that engagement goes beyond just being happy or satisfied at work.
Engaged employees are emotionally committed to the organisation and its goals. They don't work just for money or the next promotion but on behalf of the organisation's goals and are willing to put in discretionary effort to help the company succeed.
Employee engagement and remote working
There is an ongoing debate among organisations with remote-capable employees about which work setup is better: fully remote, hybrid, or fully on-site.
Each setup has its own challenges and benefits in terms of fostering employee engagement. For instance, remote work offers greater flexibility and eliminates commuting stress, but it can also lead to feelings of isolation. On the other hand, being on-site offers bonding, collaboration, and mentoring opportunities, but it may also increase stress due to commuting and rigid schedules.
According to Gallup's analysis, employee engagement has a 3.8 times greater influence on employee stress than work location.
It's worth noting that employees' feelings about their jobs are heavily influenced by their relationships with their team and manager, regardless of whether they work remotely or on-site.
Employee engagement factors in decline
Gallup found engagement factors with the steepest declines were:
Clarity of expectations.
Connection to the company's mission or purpose.
Opportunities to learn and grow.
Opportunities for employees to do their best.
Feeling like someone cares about you at work.
Top 10 employee engagement statistics
Globally, only 20% of employees are engaged.
Low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion.
Organisations with an engaged workforce are 21% more profitable.
Employees who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.
Highly engaged business units achieve a 10% increase in customer ratings.
Businesses with engaged employees have 24% less turnover.
Organisations prioritising diversity, equity, and inclusion experience 3.2 times more engaged employees.
Highly engaged workplaces saw 41% lower absenteeism.
The direct line manager determines 70% of team engagement.
83% of millennials are actively engaged at work when they believe their organisation's culture is inclusive.
Top 10 employee engagement strategies
Some ways to improve employee engagement include:
1. Start with data: Measure employee engagement and take proper action - fruit bowls and yoga are not enough.
2. Support your managers: Yep - this means giving them mentoring or coaching. Just because you promote that awesome software engineer to lead a team - doesn't mean they know how to do it. Managers play a crucial role in fostering engagement and enhancing employee performance
3. Provide career growth opportunities: Offering employees opportunities for career advancement, mentorship, professional development, and choice assignments can enhance engagement.
2. Creating a culture of learning: Promoting continuous learning and development for employees can boost engagement and motivation.
3. Recognise employees: Acknowledging and appreciating employees' efforts and contributions through recognition programs can increase engagement.
4. Communicate the vision: Encouraging transparent communication and clearly connecting work with the company vision. We all want to know our work has a purpose.
5. Offering meaningful work: Providing employees with challenging, purposeful work aligned with their values can increase engagement and motivation.
6. Build an inclusive company culture: Cultivating an inclusive culture based on shared values driving diversity, equity, and inclusion can increase engagement, such as flexible work policies, reverse mentoring, ERGs, and inclusive leadership.
7. Allign and empower employees: Communicate the vision and give employees autonomy, decision-making authority, and the resources they need to succeed.
8. Build inclusive work policies: Support employees through flexible work arrangements, wellness programs, and mental health initiatives that can improve engagement.
9. Embrace Radical Candor: Establishing a feedback culture where bosses and employees receive feedback. Get intentional about how you do this with frameworks such as Radical Candor.
10. Make collaboration work better: Encouraging collaboration is not enough; support employees to collaborate better—no one wants to be in Zoom all day.
➡️ Want a head start?
Check out Kinkajou's coaching and diversity, equity and inclusion consulting programs for an employee engagement booster.