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…