2: The Importance of Engaged Employees
Interest in employee engagement tends to surge during periods of low unemployment. When unemployment is high, employers are less concerned. Disengaged employees are less likely to leave when there are fewer opportunities, and even if they do leave they are easier to replace with a swollen pool of desperate candidates. Said another way, employees feel trapped and will tolerate a great deal of unpleasantness to retain their jobs.
However, the author stresses that engagement should be a front-burner topic at all times. Taking employees for granted during an economic downturn encourages an exodus, usually of the best employees, when the economy recovers. Also, the benefit of engaged employees is more than just retention: it impacts many performance metrics (customer satisfaction, efficiency, health and safety issues, etc.) that are always important, and particularly so in a challenging economy.
He lists a number of the benefits of employee engagement:
- Engagement improves financial performance - both in terms of effectiveness (achieving goals) and efficiency (reducing cost)
- Engaged employees have better morale, which increases performance, decreases turnover, and decreases disciplinary problems
- Engaged employees advocate for their companies, making it easier to attract talent
- Engaged employees have fewer work-related accidents and stress-related problems
- Engaged employees provide a more positive experience with customers, which correlates to customer loyalty
He also considers that surveys of employees to determine what causes them to feel engaged are highly inconsistent and often identify factors that are beyond the control of management. The results are also highly idiosyncratic to the worker, and differ among organizations.
Tower and Trenches
Business leaders tend to focus on the financial benefits of engagement: they simply want to achieve better results. Academics, meanwhile, tend to be interested in exploring the parameters associated with development and develop rich metrics. But the two do not always meet: satisfying the metrics developed by academics does not lead to financial results.
There are various non-financial benefits of employee engagement: personal development, talent management and retention, clarity of organizational values, employee morale and empowerment, fair treatment, accurate performance appraisal, health and safety, hob satisfaction, etc. These values are often obliquely related to financial performance.