When any firm begins to nosedive financially, it’s often due to disengaged people who lose interest in offering peak-performances. Have you seen it happen?
The Gallup Employee Engagement Index reported that 70% of workers are disengaged ... and that $300 billion a year is lost in productivity across US firms. Futhermore, it's a global problem. The 2005 Watson Wyatt Survey stated that a mere 12% of UK workers are engaged, for instance. It doesn't have to be that way. 
Have you noticed what triggers rally up any workforce … in ways that also raise the bottom line?
Disengaged people in business or university settings seem to leap back onboard when:
1. Talk moves away from leader-centered and exchanges occur regularly in vibrant roundtables … where diverse talents act as tools to solve daily problems.
2. Novices and experts alike find opportunities to explore new angles and create products that reflect strengths from their unique mix of intelligences.
3. Tone sustains goodwill so the workplace community remains both safe and challenging and provides a place where quality results are evident.
4. Discovery becomes the handmaiden of best practices and where more participants get involved in the organization’s vision.
5. Workers are encouraged to bring their unique mix of intelligences to their work daily, and performance reports factor in the firm’s goals as well as worker strengths.
Not surprisingly, people do better and the bottom line improves … when workers engage their unique solutions to problems that tend to strike any organization. How do you engage people in ways that build better work communities?
Nice post, Ellen. I agree with everything you've said. My only problem is that there seem to be two underlying assumptions that aren't valid.
Assumption 1: It's a reasonable goal to have everyone engaged. I don't think so. My experience is that there are a large number of folks out there that show up, give a good day's work for their pay and then go home. They're not engaged by most common definitions and they never will be, but they're essential for business success.
Assumption 2: If we can improve engagement significantly, everything will be better. A big improvement in engagement levels would certainly improve our results, but ability is an issue here. People who are engaged without being fully trained or capable of doing the job don't really help much.
The beauty of what you've said is that whether you do it to improve engagement or just to improve morale and productivity, you can get a big payoff.
Posted by: Wally Bock | July 27, 2008 7:38 PM | Permalink to Comment