And The Employee Engagement Survey Says . . . 

Last week I wrote a post entitled Your Employees Are Happy . . . And Other Popular Myths. In this post I explained that having happy employees and having engaged employees are not necessarily the same thing and that as business leaders we need to strive for engaged employees.

I provided links for two informal surveys to gauge where the readers of the blog sit with respect to the Gallup engagement poll results that stated that only 31% of US employees are engaged at work. I provided a survey for managers and a separate one for employees.

This week, we will take a look at a summary of the results.

Employee Survey Results

Taking a look at the overall summary question; Do you consider yourself to be engaged at work?

  • 18% said “not at all”
  • 12% said “a little”
  • 24% said “somewhat”
  • 35% said “very”
  • 12% said “completely”

So, according to my very unscientific survey, 47% of the readers of this blog are engaged at work (35%+12%). This means that we beat the US engagement rate of 31%. This is good news . . . kind of! It still means that 53% of our workforce is not really engaged at work. What is this costing our businesses each day to have 53% of our workforce not really engaged in the role they were hired to perform?

Managers/Leaders Survey Results

Do you believe your staff are engaged, productive and happy at work?

  • 6% said “not at all”
  • 18% said “barely”
  • 53% said “somewhat”
  • 24% said “very”
  • 0% said “completely”

Even with the understanding that this is a very unscientific survey, it is concerning to see that that only 24% of our business leaders believe their workforce is very engaged!

It is also concerning to see that 47% of employees think they are engaged while the leadership thinks that only 24% are engaged. That is a big disconnect!

The obvious question that needs to be addressed is, “What can we do to increase employee engagement and align leaders with their employees?”

I will provide some ideas over the next few weeks on what actions business leaders can take to improve employee engagement. In the meantime, take a look at some of my past blog posts that contain some good employee engagement improving ideas.

1) Help employees use their natural strengths at work – Use Your Gifts To Build A Life You Can Be Proud Of

2) Communicate, Communicate, Communicate – How To Get The Pulse Of Your Organization Part 1 and Part II

3) Listen to your employees – How Much Are Poor Listening Skills Costing You?

4) Have a clear vision, mission, values and goals for your organization

5) Give your employees continuous feedback and not a once a year “performance assessment” – The Dreaded Performance Assessment

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.

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