The Bad News: A Gallup survey found that lack of employee engagement costs American businesses about $500 billion in productivity each year.
The Good News: The survey also found that a huge part of the solution is in your company right now: your Managers. In fact, the employee’s relationship with his/her direct manager accounts for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores.
Why should we care?
Engaged vs. Disengaged
(survey of 50,000 business units, 1.4 million employees)
Customer ratings +10
Profitability +20
Productivity +21
Turnover -45
Safety incidents -44
Shrinkage (theft) -28
Absenteeism -37
Quality (defects) -41
Oh, yeah…and 50% of Managers have never been trained how to manage !
So, can your Managers engage employees? Think about how your managers would rate in his/her ability to:
- Help the employee to develop time and action calendars complete with milestones and follow-up
- Delegate responsibilities in order to foster a subordinate’s development and growth
- Give structured and meaningful one-on-one performance meetings
- Create an environment in which the employee can take risks and fail
- Keep the team motivated and focused during anxious times
- Communicate about what happens in employee’s life outside of work
- Attempt to get staff buy-in before initiating change
- Coach performance in a way that the employee is motivated to improve
- Create an environment of open communication in which employees feel safe
- Communicate daily—or almost daily-with each employee