A Gallup report from June 2015 revealed that only 31.9% of U.S. workers are engaged in their jobs. Furthermore, only 13% of those surveyed are highly engaged at work. Yikes! What does that mean? More importantly, what can leaders do about it? As someone who is passionate about encouraging people to do what they love and love what they do, I have to speak up. 

What does engagement mean?

According to Forbes, it does not mean employee happiness or satisfaction. Having fun at work or a lack of complaints does not equate to an employee being engaged.

“Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals,” says Forbes. When team members are emotionally committed to their work and organization, they buy in to the company’s vision; they “use discretionary effort;” they do the little things that help the team succeed.

• Relationships
• Individual Values
• Life Outside of Work
• Regular Performance Feedback
• Company’s Contributions to Society 
• Confidence in Senior Leadership
• Satisfaction with Next Line Supervisor
• Trust and Confidence in Leaders 
• Feeling Valued by Employer

Why does engagement matter?

According to Inc., a lack of employee engagement is extremely costly. Including factors such as absenteeism, workplace accidents, and increased health care costs, low engagement is costing the U.S. between $450 billion and $550 billion per year in productivity.

New Century Financial Corporation also found that employee engagement relates directly to revenue. They discovered that actively disengaged employees produced 28 percent less revenue than engaged counterparts.

• customer ratings
• profitability
• productivity
• turnover
• safety incidents
• absenteeism
• quality

Enhancing Employee Engagement Should Be A Top Priority

Leaders, your team wants you to take action when it comes to increasing engagement. 82% of employees believe it is important for their organization to address the employee engagement problem, according to a Psychometrics Engagement Study.

With nearly 70% of employees identifying an engagement problem in their organizations, clearly something should be done. According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), companies are spending over $720 million per year on employee engagement. Yet, engagement numbers remain low. “Perhaps human resources leaders are spending their money in the wrong places…we’re making very little progress,” wrote Susan LaMotte in a HBR article on engagement.

My approach to addressing engagement may be a little different than your typical HR initiative. Rather than drafting employee engagement plans, incentive programs, and mandatory fun events, I’m coming at this from a psychological and performance-based perspective.

Free Tools to Enhance Employee Engagement Today

I believe leaders can significantly enhance team member engagement by intentionally leveraging 5 strategies.

1. Increase Opportunities for Flow

Flow is defined as, “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter,” according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life.

While there are a number of complex facets to achieving flow, one links directly to our discussion of engagement: when individuals perceive a balance between their abilities and the demands of the task.

In the figure below, you can see this relationship represented in graph form. When these two characteristics are out of balance, the individual will likely experience boredom or anxiety in his or her work.

Everything on your employee’s to-do lists or job descriptions isn’t likely to bring about flow. However, the more they can find alignment between their abilities and the challenges of their jobs, the more likely they are to be engaged in their work.

For example, 28% of Millennials believe their current employers are making “full use” of the skills they already have, according to a 2015 Millennial Survey by Deloitte. That means 72% of Millennials believe they have more to offer than their jobs demand. If their organizations found a way to utilize those additional assets, it would likely increase engagement.

2. Value Individual Contributions.

When team members believe they play a vital role in the overall success of the organization, they are more motivated, work harder,  experience less stress, and are more engaged.

The next three strategies refer to topics I’ve written more thoroughly about in previous posts.

3. Get People Using Their Strengths.

When your team members have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day, research says they are 6 times more likely to be engaged on the job.

4. Provide Rationale.

Leaders who communicate why they make decisions, prioritize projects, or explain why a task is critical to overall success ignite ownership and a sense of purpose in their teams.

5. Provide Effective Praise.

Praising the process provides team members with desired feedback that emphasizes how they arrived at successful outcomes, and teaches them the recipe for continued successes.

Free Download

To help you save time and put these tools into action, I collated the 3 blog posts mentioned above into one simple download.

What Are You Going to Do About It?

Take the 5 strategies above for a test drive. See if they enhance the engagement of your team members. Then sit down and talk with your team to assess the differences. Conversations are the best way to judge engagement according to Neil Morrison, group human resources director for Penguin Random House U.K.

Question: Does your organization have an engagement problem? Let me know in the post comments!

• Book: Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Post: Strengths: No Longer a Secret Sauce
• Post: Why: 3 Reasons Successful Leaders Share Their Rationale
• Post: “Good Job” Isn’t Good Enough: What It Means to Praise the Process