Does it ever feel to you like there are all these things we’re “supposed” to care about…but we don’t know why and aren’t even clear on what some of them are truly about?

Who knows what organizational culture REALLY is?

How about Emotional Intelligence?

Or Employee Engagement?

Or what’s the deal with employee feedback? Are we supposed to do it a lot? A little? Only when we have something good to say? What if there’s a problem?

Don’t even get me started on leadership!

It seems like there are as many schools of thought on all these things as there are people on the planet.

I completely agree; it can all be very confusing, and I actually created my company to focus on these things…and even I get confused and overwhelmed!

Today I want to create some clarity around employee engagement and provide some humanistic and business reasons that you may want to care about – even right now in a trying time. Even if your organization is going through painful cost and/or staff reductions.

One caveat: I’m not going to “should” on you; you’re a grownup and can decide for yourself whether or not it’s worth your investment.

There are probably hundreds of tools to help you engage your people, and I’m not trying to sell you on any of them. Instead, today I want to make a case for why doing something  (probably more or different from what you’re currently doing) is a really good idea.

So…what is employee engagement?

In truth, organizations get to define it for themselves…which is one of the reasons that it’s so unclear. For the purpose of this article, I went to the Society for Human Resources Managers (kind of the Bible for all things HR-related). In essence, according to SHRM, it always includes “…the degree to which employees fully occupy themselves in their work, as well as the strength of their commitment to the employer…” 

Okay, so it’s the degree to which I’m committed to both my job and my employer. There’s our definition.

It seems to me like that’s a very good thing – both for organizations and people. And it turns out that I’m right (and don’t we all love it when we’re right?!?). For organizations, strong employee engagement demonstrably reduces staff turnover, results in higher employee productivity and efficiency, creates higher customer loyalty, and increases profits.

According to Gallup’s meta-data analysis (which is studies of studies), when we’re more engaged, we’re more profitable for our companies too. A whopping 21% more profitable!

On the employee side, people are happier. It turns out the increasing employee engagement also increases our sense of purpose in our lives, our energy, our immune systems and our overall health.

Cool.

Now we have people who are engaged in their work and committed to their organizations. That gives those organizations a critical competitive advantage, including higher productivity, customer loyalty, and profits and lower employee turnover. And we have happy people who enjoy both their jobs and their lives.

All because of higher employee engagement.

That’s the great news. The bad news is that we are failing miserably at creating employee engagement! Only 19% of employees are highly engaged.

We’re doing far better than some other countries (sadly in China, employee engagement is a whopping 5%!)…but last time I checked, that wasn’t a measuring stick we wanted to use for how employees are treated.

I would think that, given the research that organizations can achieve 21% higher profits and happier people, we’d see a HUGE investment in employee engagement. So far, this isn’t what’s happening.

There are a few reasons.

Many organizations still think that employee engagement is about an abstract feeling or job satisfaction. So instead, companies try to create engagement with employee surveys and offer perks to improve the results. Here’s the surprising truth – Employee Engagement has very little to do with abstract feelings. It’s about concrete behaviors that both the organization and employees take! It has almost nothing to do with salary, benefits and perks. It has almost everything to do with managers and leaders (more on that in a second).

When we do it well, there’s a 41% reduction in absenteeism, and 59% less turnover…and that 21% increase in profitability. Engaged employees show up every day with passion, purpose, presence, and energy.

Now to managers and leaders…

Gallup finds that 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement is related to their management. Managers create the conditions that promote the behaviors of engaged employees (or just the opposite) with the relationships they establish. The manager is either an engagement-creating coach or an engagement-destroying boss, but both relationships affect employee behavior.

As most of us know, we have a BIG PROBLEM with managers. 90% of managers have never been trained!

Furthermore, the workforce has changed enormously in the last 5 years. Millennials now comprise 50% of employees and they have been tremendously successful at disrupting the workplace! Because of their influence, the expectations of ALL workers, not just Millennials, have changed as well.

People are demanding:

 work that is connecting to a larger mission/purpose

 continuous development and educational opportunities to grow themselves and

their career

 a coach, not a boss

 ongoing conversations with their manager, not an annual review

 coaching and development focused on their strengths, not their weaknesses

People who receive these things are on their way to being highly engaged. Highly-engaged workers also tend to be more supportive of organizational change initiatives and resilient in the face of change – especially important in today’s climate of frequent disruptions. A report from SHRM noted, “During periods of turmoil—when the organization is undertaking cost-reduction measures, consolidations or other dramatic change events that will profoundly impact employees—maintaining or enhancing employee engagement can be critical to the organization’s return to profitability.”

Even in the face of organizational change and tight resources, the time has never been more right for making an investment in your people and their engagement.