The state of employee engagement: Why getting it right is crucial

Employee engagement is an extremely important factor for an organisation’s success. Worryingly, many seem to ignore the benefits, creating issues with retention, attraction, and productivity.

Since the pandemic, engagement has fortunately been on the rise. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, engagement reached record highs in 2022. Gallup noted that “this means more workers found their work meaningful and felt connected to their team, manager and employer. That’s good news for global productivity and GDP growth.”

However, the results still aren’t great, especially for Aussies who sit around the middle of the park. The data revealed that just 23 per cent of Australian workers were engaged. Meanwhile, 67 per cent are disengaged, and 11 per cent are actively disengaged, meaning they’ve made it clear they don’t want to be at their organisation.

Some nations are doing better, and some worse. For example, Canada and the US saw 31 per cent engaged, 52 per cent not engaged, and 17 per cent actively disengaged. Europe, however, fared much worse, with 13 per cent engaged, 72 per cent disengaged, and 15 per cent actively disengaged.

These findings prove that more can be done to engaged the global workforce. There have been issues arising with this lack of engagement, “quiet quitting” being a major one. According to Gallup, there are more people across the world quiet quitting than those who aren’t.

Gallup described this trend as “what happens when someone psychologically disengages from work. They may be physically present or logged into their computer, but they don’t know what to do or why it matters. They also don’t have any supportive bonds with their coworkers, boss or their organisation.”

Nearly six in 10 employees globally fall into this category, and the complications that come from it are huge. In fact, Gallup revealed that quiet quitting has attributed to an $8.8 trillion blow to the global economy. That’s 9 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Stress is another key factor, with Gallup noting it’s at an all-time high. Employee stress has been actively rising over the last decade, with 2021 and 2022 seeing 44 per cent of the workforce claiming they experienced stress the previous day.

This proves that more can be done to engage our employees. The importance of engagement shouldn’t be ignored. Gallup noted that it has 3.8 times as much influence on employee stress as work location.

Gallup asked employees what they would change at their workplace to make it a great place to work. Engagement was the top answer, with 41 per cent saying they’d change engagement or culture. Following was pay and benefits at 28 per cent, and wellbeing at 16 per cent.

Engagement should be a top priority for businesses if they’re to keep a strong workforce. Getting it right is crucial to retaining, attracting, and performing. To assist, Built In listed 16 ways to improve employee engagement:

1. Model your core values and mission.
2. Ask for and learn from feedback.
3. Make sure your managers are engaged.
4. Set up volunteer activities.
5. Support employees’ physical and mental health.
6. Recognise and reward top performers.
7. Send frequent employee engagement surveys.
8. Plan company outings.
9. Create employee resource groups.
10. Encourage passion projects.
11. Fine-tune your onboarding process.
12. Provide professional development and career path options.
13. Offer training opportunities and programs.
14. Remove unnecessary tasks from workflows.
15. Give employees flexible work situations.
16. Equip managers with employee engagement training.