The statistics on workforce engagement are shocking.
According to research, only 29 percent of employees are motivated and energized. What, then, is happening to the other two-thirds of people working in organizations?
This is an even worse scenario than the old joke in which a manager is asked how many people work in his company and he responds, “About half of them.”
What is causing all these people to lose their enthusiasm and commitment? Almost everyone joins an organization with engagement. What is it that extinguishes that initial engagement after the first years of working in an organization?
Measuring Employee Engagement
Since 1997 the Gallup Organization has surveyed approximately 3 million employees in three hundred thousand work units within corporations. This survey consists of 12 questions—called the “Q 12” — to measure employee engagement on a five-point scale.
The Gallup Management Journal’s semi-annual Employee Engagement Index puts the current percentage of truly “engaged” employees at 29 percent. A majority of workers, 54 percent, fall into the “not engaged” category, while 17 percent are “actively disengaged.”
“Great organizations achieve sustainable growth and profits because they do what other organizations don’t: they maximize the innate, individual talents of their employees to connect with customers. They know that tapping the resources of humans is the only remaining area where significant improvements can—and do—lead to an unlimited source of competitive advantages.” Curt Coffman, Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina, in Follow this Path 2002
