Disengagement in the workplace is an ongoing issue. According to Gallup, only 32 percent of full- and part-time employees are engaged in their company, while 18 percent are actively disengaged.
But what exactly does disengagement mean? While engaged employees are involved and enthusiastic about their work, actively disengaged employees are disgruntled and feel that their needs are continuously unmet.
When disengagement is allowed to run rampant, the whole company suffers. Employees who are actively disengaged reportedly cost a total of $7.8 trillion in lost productivity worldwide. That’s 11 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP).
Disengagement spreads throughout a company. It doesn’t end with just one worker. So if you don’t stop disengagement, you may find one employee after another leaving.
To prevent this attrition, you must re-engage your employees and motivate them in the workplace. With these five steps, you’ll find a more engaged workforce, a healthier work environment, and a more productive atmosphere.
1. Prevent anonymity in remote workers
Part of being engaged at work is feeling connected to your workplace. For previous generations, going to work often meant meeting new friends and forging bonds with them. This camaraderie helped create healthy work environments where people felt they had support.
According to one survey, having a friend at work makes you 95 percent happier and 74 percent more productive. In addition, of the 1,200 Americans surveyed, 92 percent said having a friend impacted whether or not they’d stay with a company.
But that same survey said younger generations are less likely to have friends at work, with remote work potentially playing a significant role. For example, fully remote workers reported 33 percent fewer friends at work than those in the office.
How can you encourage friendly relationships in a remote workplace? First, prevent anonymity between coworkers by requiring your employees to have their profile pictures on communication applications like Slack. They can put a face to a name, making them feel like they know their coworkers.
2. Keep emails professional, personal, and to the point
The average working professional spends about 28 percent of their workweek in their email inbox. Is it any wonder it’s hard to capture a colleague’s attention with an email? With so little time in the day, no one wants to feel like they’re wasting it by reading emails they don’t need to read.
If you habitually hit the “Reply All” button, you should rethink your email strategy. Although the old statistic says you have 27 seconds to catch someone’s attention, this doesn’t apply to emails. When sending an email, you only have 3 seconds to get their attention before they click away.
So rather than sending long emails or emails on long threads that are mostly irrelevant to the recipient, go through the email you want to send and ensure it contains the information needed.
Your email should be thoughtful and purposeful. Demonstrate you value your employees’ time by preventing them from searching through an email chain to find relevant information.
Your employee may not search because they didn’t find relevance in those crucial first three seconds, and your email might just go in the trash. This action may demonstrate disengagement, but it may have only occurred because they didn’t think you valued their time.
With small steps like only sending needed information in emails, you can prevent disengagement from happening in the first place.
3. Stop micromanaging
Most workers tend to agree that micromanaging isn’t beneficial for the workplace. Plenty of research dating back decades demonstrates that micromanaging limits productivity and can stall a business’s growth.
So, why does it continue to happen? Micromanagement can be tricky to spot, especially if you’re the one engaging in this type of behavior.
Do you have micromanagement tendencies? Do you tend to assume no one can get the job done? Do you obsess over every project detail and expect constant updates from your team? Do you have trouble trusting your team to follow a process without a step-by-step guide?
If you are following these behavior patterns, take action to stop. Build trust with your team and learn to take a step back. Even if mistakes happen, resist the urge to take over the project. Instead, allow your team to work through their mistakes and set up the right types of team coordination to foster communication and collective learning. The more they’re able to learn from errors, the less likely those errors will occur. Over time, you’ll have a more productive, self-reliant, and engaged team.
4. Set attainable goals together
Goal setting is an essential part of building a business. As a CEO, you always aim for the next place you want to take your company. You never want to stop growing. Most likely, you feel the same about your employees.
You may set goals and analyze them during annual performance reviews. Goals can help your employee engagement because people have something toward which to work. But unattainable goals can do the opposite.
Imposing unattainable goals on your employees can create a vicious cycle. First, they work toward a goal they can’t reach but fail to achieve it. Then, they feel like a failure, and those negative feelings impact their work performance.
From the outside, all you see is an employee not meeting expectations. On the inside, your employee feels crushed under the weight of expectations they can’t achieve. Eventually, they disengage, thanks to this crushing feeling.
One of the best ways to prevent unattainable goals from disengaging your employees is by setting goals with them. Rather than enforcing goals you want them to meet, talk to them about what they believe is achievable.
For example, ask them to strive to grow, but don’t expect someone to quadruple their sales quota overnight. Before your employee leaves their performance review, take the time to ask them about what steps they’ll take to achieve their goal. If the steps seem unreasonable, work with them to reconsider their plan.
5. Invest in their future
Feeling stagnant in your career may cause you to disengage at work. Research suggests that this fact is especially true for millennials and Gen Zers. For example, a Gallup poll found that 87 percent of millennials rate development opportunities to be an essential job attribute.
Meanwhile, a LinkedIn poll found that 76 percent of Gen Zers believe learning opportunities are the key to a successful career.
Show that you want to invest in these workers’ careers. For example, provide professional development at work. You can also consider giving your employees stipends to take continuing education courses outside the workplace.
Also, place a premium on the employee onboarding experience. Do everything necessary to ensure your employees are comfortable in their new job from day 1.
While these actions are indeed an investment and require additional spending, you’re ultimately helping your company in the long run. Your staff will be better trained and more engaged thanks to your investment.
Disengagement can sneak up on a company. Once it’s established itself, however, it’s not impossible to rid the workplace of it. Getting rid of disengagement takes you being willing to make some changes in the workplace and your and your team leaders’ behaviors. Employees want to feel valued and motivated.
By setting realistic goals, providing learning opportunities, and demonstrating that you understand the value of their time, you can help re-engage your workers. You should also build trust with your team and help them create it with each other. By taking these steps, you’ll find a better-engaged workforce motivated to succeed.
FAQs
What are the three C's of employee engagement? ›
To help you build your business value and retain a team you can trust, we'll dive into the three Cs that impact employee retention: Compensation. Career path. Culture.
What is the best strategy for improving employee engagement? ›- Communicate deliberately and regularly. ...
- Invest in wellbeing. ...
- Invite feedback – and act on it. ...
- Define your organisation's purpose – and share it. ...
- Empower your people. ...
- Recognise good work.
Gallup reports that in high-turnover organizations (those with more than 40% annualized turnover), employee engagement can decrease employee attrition and turnover by as much as 18%. In low-turnover organizations, it's more like 43%.
How do you retain employees through engagement strategies? ›- Solid onboarding. ...
- Positive company culture. ...
- Listen to your employees. ...
- Make your employees feel valued. ...
- Give employees opportunities. ...
- Company events. ...
- Don't overwhelm your employees. ...
- Create an employee engagement strategy.
In this white paper, learn the four essential components of engagement: enablement, energy, empowerment, and encouragement. To create a workplace of truly engaged employees, each of these four elements must be alive and thriving in an organization.
What are the 4 pillars of employee engagement? ›By building an engagement strategy on the four pillars: well-being, company culture, training and development, and recognition, and powering it with modern technology, employers can improve their recruitment and retention rates.
What are the 5 strategies for building a culture of employee engagement? ›- Make Your Work More Meaningful. ...
- Make Your Work Culture Inspiring. ...
- Improve Internal Leadership Efforts. ...
- Encourage Employee Cooperation and Bonding. ...
- Say Yes to Feedback Culture.
The most important factors that affect employee attrition are pay, workload, flexibility, development, and hiring. Knowing and understanding these factors plays a huge role in the decreasing of employee attrition within a company, and can help firms greatly in the long run.
What factors affect attrition? ›- Poor job satisfaction and pay. Job satisfaction and pay often go hand-in-hand. ...
- Not enough career opportunities. ...
- Poor workplace culture. ...
- Lack of employee motivation. ...
- Poor work-life balance. ...
- Not fitting in and feeling a sense of belonging.
Job Satisfaction Level
Job satisfaction is one of the most important factors affecting employee engagement. If employees don't feel satisfied in their job, it's very difficult for them to feel engaged when at work. This factor includes their daily duties, along with the following: The company itself.
What are the 5 main drivers of employee retention? ›
The five main drivers of employee retention are strong leadership, frequent feedback, including recognition, opportunities for advancement, competitive compensation packages, and a good work/life balance. For retention strategies to be successful, they should be crafted with these five drivers in mind.
What are the 6 elements of employee engagement? ›It researched the relationship between employee experience and its employee experience index (EX), which is comprised of six elements–authenticity, engagement, optimism, purpose and meaning, social connection, and belonging.
What are the 6 elements of engagement? ›- A clear purpose. Community engagement doesn't have to be hard, but it does have to be intentional. ...
- Smooth internal organization. ...
- An inclusive approach. ...
- Clear and continuous communication. ...
- Action, please! ...
- A continuity mindset.
There are six distinct stages at play: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention and separation. An employee passes each stage chronologically.
What are the 5 keys to engagement? ›These keys are grouped under the acronym “MAGIC” and include meaning, autonomy, growth, impact, and connection.
What are the 5 engagement levels? ›- The physiological level of Maslow's hierarchy = survival mode in terms of engagement. ...
- The shelter level = security mode. ...
- The belonging level = seeking mode. ...
- The esteem level = meaningful work mode. ...
- The self-actualization level = highflyers.
- Social engagement.
- Cognitive engagement.
- Behavioural engagement.
- Collaborative engagement.
- Emotional engagement.
Good examples of employee engagement include employees showing up to work with a sense of purpose, a deep commitment to the organization, dedication to performing well, a collaborative attitude, good communication with co-workers and leaders, and the ability to give and receive feedback positively.
How do you control attrition? ›- Foster a pleasant work environment. The work environment is the space where employees fulfill their job responsibilities. ...
- Appoint the right leadership. ...
- Give employees creative freedom. ...
- Prioritize professional growth. ...
- Offer competitive compensation and benefits.
- Carefully consider the hiring process. ...
- Make the hard choice on letting employees go. ...
- Keep compensation and benefits current. ...
- Encourage generosity and gratitude. ...
- Recognize and reward employees. ...
- Offer a flexible, healthy work life balance.
How do you improve employee engagement and motivation? ›
- Walk the walk. ...
- Increase employee engagement and motivation by giving regular constructive feedback. ...
- Create a safe working environment. ...
- Recognise the signs of low morale. ...
- Recognise achievements to increase employee engagement and motivation. ...
- Get to know your employees.
The seven factors of employee engagement are strong leadership, a caring culture, meaningful work, regular feedback (including recognition), professional growth opportunities, the autonomy to work independently, and an inclusive work environment where employees feel free to be their authentic selves.
What are the three types of engagement techniques? ›Engagement in the classroom falls within three categories: behavioral, cognitive, and affective (Fredericks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). These three types are distinct yet interrelated.
What is the number 1 reason for attrition? ›The four main causes of turnover are lack of growth and progression, inefficient management, inadequate compensation, and poor workplace culture. These reasons for staff leaving are present at many organizations around the world.
How can staff attrition be prevented? ›- Set realistic expectations. ...
- Offer support and show appreciation. ...
- Train employees with effective tools. ...
- Communicate well and often. ...
- Compensate fairly and recognize high performers.
- Find the Right Talent. Every company has a different hiring process. ...
- Encourage Retention Early On. ...
- Recognize and Reward Employees. ...
- Identify a Clear Career Path. ...
- Encourage a Healthy Work-Life Balance. ...
- Create Learning and Development Programs.
Summary. Research shows that six important factors in employee retention are people and culture, acknowledgement at work, providing meaningful benefits, ongoing training, workplace environment, and mission and values alignment.
What are the key drivers of attrition? ›- Lack of opportunities for advancement or professional development.
- Inequality between salary and workload.
- Role conflict (e.g., expectations that cannot be fulfilled)
- Inadequate training and skills to perform tasks.
- Lack of supportive management.
Loss of productivity:
Heavily interdependent organizations are likely to face reduced productivity when facing employee attrition. As a result, the output on the job is heavily reduced and there's pressure on fewer people to do more work.
Alongside poor leadership, poor communication is one of the biggest barriers to employee engagement. Ineffective communication is incredibly frustrating to employees. It promotes inefficiency and creates a breeding ground of distrust and confusion.
What drives high employee engagement? ›
People want purpose and meaning from their work. They want to be known for what makes them unique. This is what drives employee engagement. And they want relationships, particularly with a manager who can coach them to the next level.
What makes an employee more engaged? ›For an employee to be engaged, they are motivated to work hard towards a common goal that is in line with the company's vision. They will be committed to the values their organization represents. Engaged employees will have a clear view and understanding of the objectives of the work they are doing.
What is a good employee retention strategy? ›Developing and improving your overall company culture, building better employee engagement and offering clear communication, consistent management and transparency will all help reduce employee burnout. Additionally, providing wellness offerings and other perks can greatly help with employee retention.
What drives employee engagement 2023? ›Transparency. With 2023 forecasted to be a challenging economic year, employees are looking for organizations that have a strategic plan for navigating this level of uncertainty. Employees will also be on the lookout for leaders that prioritize educating their team members on both strategy and economic trends.
What motivates employee retention? ›Recognize achievements, milestones and special occasions.
In addition to recognizing employees who go above and beyond, companies should also acknowledge birthdays, anniversaries, births, etc. Personal recognition helps employees feel more valued, motivated and productive.
Clarify= Clearly identify the decision to be made or the problem to be solved. Consider=Think about the possible choices and what would happen for each choice. Think about the positive and negative consequences for each choice. Choose=Choose the best choice!
What is three C's method? ›The mnemonic of “The Three C's” (Catching, Checking, and Changing) can be particularly helpful to children in learning this process. To engage children in treatment, therapists often frame the therapy experience as “becoming a detective” to investigate their thinking.
What do the three C's include? ›Have you ever asked a mechanic for advice only to get bombarded with follow-up questions? If so, what you experienced was the start of a methodical repair process known as "The Three C's." The three C's are as follows; Concern, Cause, and Correction.
What are the 3 C's of management? ›The next time you are leading your team, focus on your mindset and decide to be a three-C leader: competent, committed and with strong character. When we do that, our employees win, and when they win, we all win. Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries.
What is 3 C and Q method? ›Description: The 3CQ Model of discussion (Compliment-Connect-Comment-Question) was developed by Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell, a high school teacher who sought to train her students in effective communication in an online discussion forum. The model provides a structure by which learners may respond to peer posts.
What are the three C's of success? ›
if you want to be successful, focus on the three Cs: confidence, competence and connections. Whether you're at the beginning of your journey, or ready to take your next bold step, you might be preoccupied with the same question that plagues all of us: what can I do to turn this into a success?
What are 3 the five elements in the management process? ›At the most fundamental level, management is a discipline that consists of a set of five general functions: planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. These five functions are part of a body of practices and theories on how to be a successful manager.