Not understanding the link between employee engagement and performance outcomes is like trying to win the French Open with a stringless tennis racquet.
Good luck with that.
As we see from Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Report, addressing and improving employee engagement directly impacts our businesses, customer satisfaction and success.
Here are three ways to put some actual strings on your organizational racquet and drive superior results.
Engaged employees are the only employees who create new customers (pg. 21).
No new customers = out of business.
Even the kid down the block running his first lemonade stand doesn’t need Peter Thiel to help explain this one.
The discretionary time, effort and energy engaged employees pour into your organization dwarfs the output of your disengaged, or worse, actively disengaged workers.
Those folks in the middle? Sorry. As far as new business is concerned, they’re not helping increase new revenue for your company.
What to do?
Continually foster your employees’ engagement by asking—and addressing—questions like these from Gallup’s Q12 survey:
• Do your people have the equipment and tools needed to effectively do their work?
• Do your people have the opportunity to do what they do best every day?
• In the last seven days, have your employees received praise or recognition for doing good work?
Excel at monitoring and responding to these employee engagement questions or learn to accept your organization’s average performance.
Engaged employees directly link to better overall performance outcomes (pg. 25).
The key performance outcomes are: customer ratings, profitability, productivity, turnover, safety incidents, shrinkage (theft), absenteeism and quality (defects).
Engaged workers provide better results in all of the above categories.
Further, one of the top determinants of engaged employees is the quality of the worker’s manager.
Teams in the top quartile of engagement (the best managed) versus teams in the bottom quartile (the worst managed) have almost 50% fewer accidents and 41% less quality defects!
As Gallup CEO, Jim Clifton, states:
“These managers from hell are creating active disengagement costing the U.S. an estimated $450 billion to $500 billion annually. If your company reflects the average in the U.S., just imagine what poor management and disengagement are costing you bottom line.”
Remove your leadership development program from its decade-old coffin binder.
• Do your managers really excel at coaching, growing and developing talent?
• Do they possess the crucial emotional intelligence needed to foster employee engagement on their teams?
• Is management the only avenue available for employees who want to advance their careers? Worse, is an individual in management because they were the only employee willing to relocate? Seen it happen…
Leaders who foster employee engagement are a powerful force multiplier in your organization. Moreover, who you’ve put in charge of growing and developing your next group of leaders means life or death to your organization.
Get your leaders right, and you have a shot at excellence.
Get them wrong and you might as well kneecap your organization every Monday morning Jeff Gillooly-style…
Only 30% of U.S. workers are engaged in their work. The ratio of engaged-to-disengaged is 2-to-1 (pg. 8).
70% of U.S. workers are not reaching their full potential.
• If your cell phone plan only got 30% coverage, would you change your network?
• If your maps app only delivered you to the correct location on three out of ten trips, would you start using a different GPS tool?
• If your car only started eight months out of the year, would you visit a dealership this weekend?
The answer is yes to all of the above unless you’re a glutton for punishment.
Yet, employers continue to mistake employee happiness or disposable office perks with the more meaningful metric of employee engagement.
As shown in Gallup’s research, “Satisfied or happy employees are not necessarily engaged employees. Engaged employees have well-defined roles in the organization, make strong contributions, are actively connected to their larger team and organization and are continuously progressing.”
Simply put, the State of the American Workplace has shown us we have much room for improvement.
An engaged employee is a thriving employee.
A team of engaged employees creates new business opportunities, exceeds critical performance outcomes and is better positioned to achieve its full potential.
If you’re plowing through your days with little attention to the power of employee engagement, you’re in trouble.
Take a Gatorade break, wipe off the sweat and go restring your racquet.
We know what we need to do to build thriving organizations. We just have to commit to the work to do it.
Click here to receive a free download of the entire Gallup State of the American Workplace report.
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Cheers,
Doug
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