 |
Employee engagement and your bottom line
Susan Rochester
Balance at Work Pty Ltd
In businesses struggling to do more with less,
one key to productivity is often overlooked. In this article, we
take a closer look at employee engagement, or an employee’s
emotional and intellectual commitment to their organisation.
In their 2008 ‘Q12 Survey’ of 1000 employees in Australia, The
Gallup Organisation found that 79% of workers were not engaged
or were actively disengaged. Gallup estimated this represented a
productivity loss to the nation of around $42 billion annually,
which can be translated to lower potential profitability at the
individual business level.
An engaged employee is passionate about what they do and will
drive innovation to move the organisation forward. Actively
disengaged employees are unhappy and don’t really care who knows
it – they will undermine what engaged people are trying to
accomplish.
In the middle are those who are not engaged. These employees are
not adding to business growth. They are happy to collect their
pay, as long as they don’t have to put in too much extra effort
to get it. In most businesses, this represents the majority of
employees (6 out of 10), and there will be one actively
disengaged employee for every engaged employee.
So how do you know which category applies to your employees?
If you’re wondering about engagement levels in your business,
consider what your team’s responses might be to twelve questions
Gallup asked employees:
1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your
work right?
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best
every day?
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or
praise for doing good work?
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about
you as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your
job is important?
9. Are your fellow employees committed to doing quality work?
10. Do you have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you
about your progress?
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to
learn and grow?
The beauty of these questions is that you don’t even have to ask
your employees for their responses, although it would be
preferable to do so. Simply reflecting on what their answers
might be will give you a plenty of useful information you can
act on now to start making the changes necessary to have more
engaged employees.
Balance at Work is the human capital expert for financial
services companies of 5-500 employees. We combine the most
accurate, insightful and easy to use online testing tool with
expert advice, to give managers confidence to hire the right
people first, make the most of their potential and approach
difficult performance discussions with ease, creating businesses
that are highly competitive because they have productive and
valued employees. Find out more at www.balanceatwork.com.au or
call 1300 785 150.
Back to top
Back to newsletter |
