Key Challenges Faced By Leaders and Managers - #1 Engagement

Did you know that the Fast Company research shows 74% of employees want to walk away from their jobs?

DDI defines engagement as “the extent to which people enjoy and believe in what they do and feel valued for doing it.” This means that people feel that the business is part of their inner core and adds value to their life.

• 17% of employees are actively engaged
• 57% of employees are not engaged
• 26% of employees are actively disengaged

As managers, we need to work on those who are “not engaged” as a priority as this is where we can create the greatest productivity leap. It is also essential to manage the risk of those “actively disengaged” employees who at the very least can be unproductive and at the worst can bad mouth the boss and company increasing levels of negativity in a team.

Put simply, if a person cares more they will work harder and be more committed to supporting the company and their peers.

It is interesting to note that most training resources are spent at management and leadership level and it is these groups that are seen to be the most engaged. Whereas, less training is given to those in production or manufacturing roles and polls show that employees at this level are seen as the least engaged. But it is these people who do the most work and small changes in their engagement will result in the most response.

According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) research, nearly half of Britain’s employees hold back effort at work, believing that extra effort will not be recognised or rewarded.

• “Employees with lower engagement are four times more likely to leave their jobs than those who are highly engaged.” (Source: Driving performance and retention through employee engagement. Corporate Leadership Council)
• “66% of highly engaged employees reported that they had no plans to leave their company, while only 3% of them were actively looking, compared to 12% and 31%, respectively, for disengaged employees.” (Source: Towers Perrin 2004 European Talent Survey: Reconnecting with Employees: Attracting, Retaining, and Engaging, Towers Perrin)
• “Engaged employees in the UK take an average of 2.69 sick days per year; the disengaged take 6.19.” (Source: Employee Engagement: How to Build a High Performance Workforce. Gallup)

No one impacts the state of an employee’s engagement more than their immediate leader. While this might be a slight exaggeration, we believe most people do not leave their jobs; they leave their bosses. Show us a highly engaged team, and there’s a strong likelihood we can show you a leader who is coaching for success, setting clear goals, empowering others, providing open and honest feedback, and making the winners feel valued.

If you need help improving the engagement of your employees, Wessex TEAM Training can help.

Please contact us at [email protected] or 07432 649445 if you have any questions, would like to discuss any of our training programmes or would like to organise a free team or individual training session on “Beating procrastination and increasing productivity”.