Many organizations place a high priority on employee engagement, but how many can say their workforce is fully engaged? To know whether your employees are engaged, it’s important to understand what engagement means. You can interpret employee engagement in many ways, which is why sometimes addressing it and learning how to improve it is extremely difficult.
Engagement doesn’t necessarily mean happiness or a measurable amount of work, but it can be identified through actions that reflect the emotional commitment employees have to a company. When employees lack that commitment, they become disengaged, and basically disconnect themselves emotionally from the organization and its goals. While most disengaged employees will leave their job eventually, not everyone quits. Disengaged employees who stay with an employer can have a severe negative effect on the company. They tend to be less productive, produce lower quality of work, can cost time, money, and clients, and drag other employees down with them. This is why it’s important to recognize and tackle disengagement on every level before it becomes a burden on the organization.
Companies constantly look for new ways to boost engagement, but despite the amount of awareness and recognizing a need for improvement, it’s still a common problem. Workplace factors, such as onboarding, leadership involvement, recognition programs, and career development, can all influence employee engagement levels in different ways. Employers need to develop an understanding of how these factors affect employees individually.
Engagement can dramatically vary between employees, so it’s not always easy to recognize. It’s not like a switch, where employees are either engaged or not. Engagement exists on a continuum, and employees will have different levels of engagement even from day to day. No matter how engaged employees are, there are ways employers can help employees reach or maintain higher engagement.
Understanding the root cause of negative and positive outlooks toward the organization can help you more effectively manage your team. Download our FREE Levels of Engagement Guide to discover ways to identify different types of engagement and craft a personalized approach to improve your management styles for each one.
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