Career Exchange - Career Advice

The results are in: costs of poor employee engagement and it's not pretty. 

A recent study by Gallup, examining the level of employee engagement of over 1.5 million employees in 50,000 businesses, from more than 34 countries have found the cost of low employee engagement to be in excess of $370 billion annually!

According to the study, employee engagement is absolutely essential to company performance, with those companies scoring in the 99^th percentile for employee engagement reporting a success rate four times that of those companies with lower employee engagement.

High employee engagement has been shown to significantly impact job performance in the following critical ways: 

• 37% lower absenteeism
• 25% lower turnover (in high-turnover organizations)
• 65% lower turnover (in low-turnover organizations)
• 28% less shrinkage
• 48% fewer safety incidents
• 41% fewer patient safety incidents
• 41% fewer quality incidents (defects)
• 10% higher customer metrics
• 21% higher productivity
• 22% higher profitability

Companies reporting job satisfaction in the upper half of employee engagement results are predicted to have doubled the chance of KPI achievement to those scoring in the lower half. With the study now in it's eighth year, and results remaining consistent to date, the importance of job satisfaction is not one to be taken lightly.

While simply asking your employees, “Are you satisfied in your job?” may appear to address any concerns, neglecting to explore the factors that contribute to this does not provide management with the tools to properly address these specific issues. It is up to you to the employer to investigate how to best engage, but if you need help getting started have a look at 5 Ways to Keep Employees Happy.

Source: Gallup