According to a survey by HR.com, most employers still face major employee engagement challenges.
HR.com conducted “The State of Employee Engagement” survey in January 2018 in an effort to test the theory that higher engagement can improve productivity spurred over two decades of attempts to increase organisational performance by boosting employee engagement. Because, while many organisations have spent significant amounts of money on annual surveys, programmes and employee benefits, there are still very few companies that seem to have a handle on their employee engagement practices. In fact, over 66 percent of respondents believed that less than 70 percent of their employees were engaged at work.
Here are three other key findings from the survey:
Leadership is key. Close to 75 percent of respondents believed engagement to be highly linked with supervisory relationships, leadership trust and organisational culture. The top two factors fall clearly into the realm of leadership. To be engaged, employees must trust leadership. Leaders bear most of the responsibility of improving employee engagement. What’s interesting, however, is that the top leaders bear about as much responsibility as immediate supervisors, which the report says challenges some of the conventional wisdom in the area of engagement.
No consensus on the definition of engagement. While more than two thirds of respondents believed that engagement could be defined as “an employee’s level of satisfaction with his or her work situation,” 75 percent also thought it could be defined as “an employee’s willingness to give his or her best at work” and “an employee’s emotional commitment to the organisation and its objectives.” Other definitions which respondents agreed with are: “an employee’s level of satisfaction with his or her work situation”, “an employee’s state when their personal values and goals were aligned with the organisation”, and “an employee’s positive impact on business results”.
Respondents in medium-size organisations report lower engagement than those in small and large organisations. The study suggests that small organisations tend to view their employees as more highly engaged, while mid-sized companies have the biggest problem with engagement. This is because, while the largest companies may not be able to offer engagement on a personal level, they do have the resources to invest in engagement initiatives, while mid-size companies do not have the talent management experience of larger firms.
