What Can Be Done About the Global Employee Engagement Problem?

We need to talk about employee engagement. 

Specifically, why, despite more attention than ever from many companies, nearly 80% of employees worldwide are still not engaged or are actively disengaged at work. 

The benefits of having a focused, motivated, and happy workforce are widely known and understood. Yet creating the right conditions for engagement to flourish remains a multi-faceted challenge for organizations, which includes strategy, leadership, and culture. 

In this blog, I’ll look at seven root causes of disengagement, the impacts they have, and what can be done to turn them from problems into possibilities. 

People manager support 

People managers are the single biggest influence on employee engagement (70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager). However, they’re facing a crisis themselves. The demands on them have increased to such an extent that the job is now impossible. According to Microsoft’s most recent Work Trend Index – a global survey of workers across multiple industries and companies – more than half of managers (53%) report feeling burned out at work.

Managers cannot be expected to deliver against mounting workloads and ever-lengthening list of stakeholders, while also trying to lead and develop their teams. Something must give, and often it is their team who suffer. When managers don’t have the time to set clear directions, coach and mentor, and have difficult conversations, their people don’t feel their manager cares about their work, career development, or them as individuals. Unsurprisingly, team and individual engagement plummets. 

What can be done? 

• Managers need sustainable workloads that free up time so they can focus on their people. 
• Managers also require better support from their organizations on how to engage their teams, such as goal setting

Make it mean something

Disengagement can often be traced back to a lack of connection to your work. While a lot of companies have talked about their corporate purpose in recent years, employees want to know what this means for them personally. They need to understand how their role contributes to the delivery of your corporate strategy, to feel that the job they do matters in some way. In McKinsey research, the leading driver of performance and productivity is the sense of purpose work provides.

For too many workers, this meaning is unclear. Organizations have often failed to communicate effectively enough about their strategies and individual accountabilities. This problem can be exacerbated by a lack of clear prioritization that hampers performance, and perpetual job insecurity, which raises questions about the value of employment beyond money. 

What can be done? 

• Focus your communications on explaining your business strategy to your people. 
• Help people managers bring this to life for their teams at an individual level via strategy toolkits and other resources.

Speak less, listen more

Gross simplification incoming, but in the old world of work, you sat at your desk, did what you were told, and were rarely, if ever, asked for your opinion. The rise of Gen Z in the workplace, ubiquity of social media, and an ever-increasing number of political, social, and economic challenges mean that employees have more on their minds than ever before, and don’t just want to be talked at. 

Organizations who exclusively broadcast communications in this way typically experience low levels of engagement, accountability, and performance. 

Instead, people expect to have a voice at work. They demand to be listened to, heard, and see their views acted upon. This can be evidenced in the number of organizations prioritizing ongoing, real-time employee listening activities, the rapid proliferation of Employee Resource Groups, and the focus on creating more inclusive cultures.  

What can be done? 

• Establish regular listening forums to ensure people have a safe space to share their views. 
• Empower managers to encourage feedback and share it with their leaders. 

Care about your people’s wellbeing 

The causal link between employee wellbeing and engagement is indisputable. Indeed, happy employees are a whopping 20% more productive. If your people feel that you care about them as a whole person and are interested in their life inside and outside work, they will be more invested in their job. By contrast, if they don’t feel supported, are afraid to speak up, and experience work-related stress or burnout, their engagement will tank. 

This is especially important in the modern world of hybrid and remote work, where the lines between professional and personal are not just blurred but indistinguishable. Being permanently tethered to devices can enhance anxiety, remote work can lead to loneliness, and hybrid can impact work-life balance. 

With the growing number of potential stressors, caring about your people is not a nice to have, but a business imperative for engagement. 

What can be done? 

• Look at the root causes of wellbeing – role clarity, workload, culture – and address these first. 
• Listen to your people and provide the services they need to be at their best.

Get hybrid right 

For too many companies, the fact is that hybrid still isn’t working as they would like. The reasons for this are many, including lack of a clear vision for office vs. remote work, inconsistency in the application of policies, and workspaces that have not been adapted to maximize hybrid working. 

To be fair, hybrid working in itself is not a cause of disengagement – but doing it wrong is. If your people don’t understand your reasons for hybrid working (or indeed, a full Return to Office) this will impact motivation, as employees will question why they are being called back in. 

Inconsistency in implementing hybrid rules across teams and departments can create friction and heighten feelings of unfairness, which will lead people to disengage. And if you are going to do hybrid, your offices need to be reconfigured to enable those elements you want to promote (for example, a positive work environment to encourage collaboration, innovation, and learning). 

What can be done? 

• Be clear on your reasons for doing hybrid. 
• Make your office somewhere your employees want to be, not have to be. 

Reward and recognition 

At work, as in life, it is so often the simple acts that matter most. Saying ‘thank you’ and ‘well done’ to your people are quick and easy to do, but they have an outsized impact on engagement and motivation. 

When employees believe they will be recognized, they are 2.7x more likely to be highly engaged. Everyone wants to be appreciated and recognized for their work, no matter what level they are. 

Yet in our work busyness, constantly jumping to the next deliverable, we rarely take the time to acknowledge and reward our people. Employees who don’t feel valued will not be engaged in their work, won’t put themselves forward for additional projects, and are far more likely to leave, costing your organization time and money to replace.

What can be done? 

• Set up a simple prompt system to remind your managers to regularly thank their team members. 
• Create a light touch, always-on, peer-to-peer reward and recognition system so employees can acknowledge others.

Rethink meetings 

Desk-based workers are spending a phenomenal amount of time in meetings (57% of the average employee’s time is spent in meetings, email, and chat) and it only seems to be increasing. It’s not that meetings are unnecessary, but there are too many of them, they often lack purpose and an agenda, and have become a proxy for work, at the expense of making progress on actual business problems, genuine productivity, and fulfilment. 

When bouncing from one meeting to another, employees feel drained and lack the space and time to be strategic, innovative, and creative. And badly run meetings waste time, which can lead to people having to work late and at weekends to catch up, causing unnecessary stress, disillusionment, and disengagement. 

If you want people to be engaged at work, they need to feel their time is being respected and their talents utilized. 

What can be done? 

• Be clear on the purpose and intended outcomes of every meeting, and communicate this in advance to attendees. 
• Go through your department’s calendar and review all your meetings, keeping only the essential ones.

The good news is none of these root causes of disengagement are insurmountable. All the challenges outlined above can be worked on. Yes, some require more resources than others, but on each one there are actions that, if taken together, will add up over time to increase engagement, fuel higher productivity, and generate greater profitability.