Engaging employees is becoming harder and harder as employees continue to be expected to do more, with less, for less. But I believe there is hope with innovation. Engaging an unengaged workforce will not be easy and management needs to make it a priority. As we step into 2013, consider the last five years. Have you noticed changes in employees? Take a walk through your location; do you feel your employees are engaged?
The Towers Watson’s 2012 Global Workforce Study found that 35% of the workforce is highly engaged. If you feel you have a highly engaged workforce, congratulations, you’re doing a great job. 22% of the workforce feels unsupported, 17% are detached, and 26% are disengaged. The numbers aren’t very pretty. As the study notes, productivity and companies’ bottom lines are at stake. What can you do? Get senior management on board. If they don’t care, it’s likely nothing will change.
I found the idea of sustainable engagement very interesting. The three parts of the Towers Watson lists are: traditional engagement, enablement, and energy. Being enabled suggests workers feel their environment allows for productivity in many ways and energy shows workers feel a sense of accomplishment at work.
Brian Meharry offers a few ideas on achieving sustainable engagement in his recent post “5 comp and benefits New Year’s resolutions for 2013.” Five topics came to my mind for creating sustainable engagement in 2013:
I wish you all high engagement in 2013! Check out the study by Towers Watson for more details on sustainable engagement.
Erica L. Originally posted at: http://uecubenefit.uecu.org/