I recently wrote about employee engagement. Gallup’s most recent survey on employee engagement found, “In 2023, employees in the U.S. continued to feel more detached from their employers, with less clear expectations, lower levels of satisfaction with their organizations, and less connection to its mission or purpose, than they did four years ago. They are also less likely to feel someone at work cares about them as a person.”
Damning finding. I further read in the Washington Post today,
“After more than a year of trying and failing to get its more than 5,000 workers to return to the office on a hybrid schedule, Internet Brands took a different approach.The WebMD parent created a video in which its CEO and some of its executives addressed employees, strongly encouraging them to return to the office. The lighthearted song “Iko Iko” plays in the background, and at one point, executives dance in a montage to the tune. We’re not asking or negotiating at this point. We’re informing,” Bob Brisco, chief executive of Internet Brands, says in the video published in early January. Some who saw the video on social media described it as bizarre and even cringeworthy. The company later pulled it from its public Vimeo account, but only after it went viral.”
I’d delete it too and claim I was high on something – anything – when I did it.
Throwing this in from a Katz Graduate School of Business report:
“The study analyzed a sample of Standard & Poor’s 500 firms to explore the effects of office mandates, including average change in quarterly results and company stock price. Those results were compared with changes at companies without office mandates. The outcome showed the mandates made no difference. Firms with mandates did not experience financial boosts compared with those without. The sample covered 457 firms and 4,455 quarterly observations between June 2019 and January 2023.”
Gallup found, not surprisingly, that lack of engagement is linked to key organizational outcomes like productivity, employee retention, customer engagement, and wellbeing to name a few. Further, leaders are at a disadvantage if expectations are not clear.
Again, quoting directly from the Gallup report:
Gallup analysts identified individuals in its database who have declined in clarity of expectations from 2020 to 2023. Among this group, across job types and work locations, the largest areas of decline fit into five themes:
- Feedback and Performance Focus
- Received meaningful feedback in the last week
- Performance managed to motivate outstanding performance
- Manager keeps me informed on what is going on
- Pride in quality of products/services
- Freedom to make decisions needed to do my job well
- Goals/Priorities
- Manager includes me in goal setting
- Feel prepared to do my job
- Wellbeing
- Organization cares about my wellbeing
- Able to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life
- Team
- Feel like part of the team
- Know what my coworkers are expected to do
- Have partners I can always rely on at work
- Team takes time to reflect on and discuss what we might do better
My question to you is this. How can you impact your clients knowing these things? If you speak on leadership, team building, corporate culture, service, wellbeing – almost anything – you need to make this report part of your sales and marketing,
Here’s the link to the full report: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/608675/new-workplace-employee-engagement-stagnates.aspx?utm_source=pocket_reader
Take this market intelligence and make it work for you!
Copyright 2024, Lois Creamer. Lois Creamer works with professional speakers who want to book more business, make more money, and fully monetize their message. She can be reached in the following ways: Lois@BookMoreBusiness.com
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