Employee Engagement: How It Can Affect Your Business
Engaging employees results in multiple gains for businesses, in everything from profit levels to customer engagement and sales.
Defining Employee Engagement
There is no universal definition for staff engagement. According to the book by Paul L. Marciano Carrots and sticks will not work, more than fifty definitions of this term have been identified. However, Marciano highlights the definition created by the Conference Board committee as a good conceptual definition. This defines employee engagement as “a heightened emotional and intellectual connection an employee has to their job, organization, manager, or co-workers, which, in turn, influences them to apply additional discretionary effort to their work.”
There is no universal yardstick for employee engagement, so each Voice of the Employee provider has their own way of defining and measuring it. As the leading provider of Voice of the Employee satisfaction and engagement programs, PeopleMetrics measures employee engagement based on the following characteristics: passion, effort, promotion, and retention. Engaged employees put extra effort into their work. They are more likely to stay than disengaged employees, and they are happy to recommend their employer to others.
Current Staff Engagement Levels at US Companies
Now consider these statistics from employee engagement reports that various research companies have released over the past two years regarding American workers:
– Gallup’s latest round of employee engagement research found that 28% of American workers are engaged, 54% are not engaged and 18% are not actively engaged.
– Blessing White’s 2011 Employee Engagement Report found that 31% of employees are engaged, while 17% are not engaged.
– The 2009 PeopleMetrics Employee Engagement Study found that 12% of all employees are actively disengaged at work.
– Modern Survey found that 75% of employees are not engaged and 25% are engaged or fully engaged.
While these numbers vary depending on how each company defines and measures employee engagement, we can summarize that engagement among American employees is low enough that 84% of senior leaders say disengaged employees they are one of the top three threats facing their businesses, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit.
Each company is unique. These numbers attempt to capture a national snapshot of engagement; levels among your staff may be higher or lower. A Voice of the Employee program can help you establish current engagement levels. Then an ongoing Voice of the Employee solution can help you increase these levels across your entire workforce. Here are some of the benefits of boosting staff engagement:
Results of High Staff Engagement
Several studies have found a correlation between employee engagement and profit levels; companies with higher levels of engagement tend to see higher gains over time.
1. Better overall performance. 51% of high performers are engaged, compared to just 24% of low performers. (Economic Intelligence Unit)
2. High earnings per share. Companies with a high percentage of engaged employees increased their earnings per share 28% year-over-year. (Perrin Towers)
3. High Commitment to the Client. Customers who interact with highly engaged employees tend to be more engaged themselves. (Economic Intelligence Unit)
4. Higher stock prices than competitors. Share prices of companies with highly engaged employees rose by an average of 16%, compared to the industry average of 6%. (Sirota Consulting)
5. More effort from employees. Engaged employees spend more than 57% more effort in their work. (Corporate Executive Board)
6. Higher Sales. Teams with high levels of employee engagement sell 20% more than teams with low employee engagement. (People metrics)
7. Less errors. Hospital research has linked high levels of employee engagement with fewer medication errors and lower rates of healthcare-associated infections. (Economic Intelligence Unit)
Instead of using a trial and error approach, set up a Voice of the Employee program. This will help you constantly measure employee engagement among your ranks, using proven market research techniques.
Look to partner with Voice of the Employee programs that include libraries of resources on how to improve engagement, along with real-time tools to help managers quickly respond to employee needs.
