The last few years have been hard on employers and even harder on employees.  Most companies had to make some difficult decisions regarding retaining their employees, and most companies had to downsize their employment ranks.  The people that were left at each of these companies were forced to do more with less.  For many of them, the continued employment meant being able to pay their bills, not working for a company that they were emotionally invested.

Emotionally invested, engaged, committed — you can run a search engine on the topic and get millions of hits.  But as managers, it is most important to find out the employee engagement level in your group, business unit, and company.  Engaged employees are the ones giving back to the company.  They are the ones who are excited and enthusiastic, more focused on their work than “watching the clock”, and willing to give high levels of discretionary effort.  One of the reports I read suggested that only a third of employees in any company are engaged.  The rest of your folks are either neutral or disengaged.  Disengaged employees are the ones who are staying because of what they get from the company, not what they give.  These disengaged employees are usually the ones who have the most safety violations, are tough to manage, and can be detrimental to the overall morale of the company.

Most managers look at employee engagement like the medical odds you are given before you go into surgery.  The complications and negative outcomes will only happen to someone else, not them.  These managers insist that, of course, their workforce is engaged, their company is above the average engagement levels, and the disengaged employees referred to in most reports work for their competitors…

Why don’t you find out the truth…

WORKPLACE ENGAGEMENT SURVEY

The Workplace Engagement Survey™ (WES) measures the degree to which your employees connect with their work and feel committed to the organization and its goals.

This gives you and your management teams a detailed view of what influences engagement across all of your workforce segments and how your employees compare statistically to the overall working population. In addition, the WES measures “satisfaction with employer” and “satisfaction with manager” across your entire organization and gives recommendations for your organization to improve.

Why survey your employees?

Employee surveys are becoming a popular management tool. They not only help management investigate whether employees align with corporate values, but they identify problem areas and elicit information to increase engagement.

Employees who are highly engaged, are:

• Excited and enthusiastic
• More focused on their work than “watching the clock”
• Willing to give high levels of discretionary effort
• Emotionally involved with the company
• Mentally involved with company
• Not easily distracted
• Focused
• Highly productive

Did You Know?

• Disengaged employees are 53% less productive than their engaged counterparts.
• Disengaged employees are 24% more likely to remain at their current employer

In finding out the truth, and if the truth is that you have people problems, the Workplace Engagement Survey can help you measure the degree that the problem exists.  As in all things, if you can measure it, you can fix it.

Call or email me today.