Employee engagement has barely budged in two decades — and the financial cost of ignoring it is staggering. When people feel unseen, underappreciated, and disconnected, they stop giving their best and eventually stop showing up altogether. The good news: a relatively small investment in recognition and connection can dramatically change both the numbers and the human experience behind them.
Key Takeaways:
Let's think about what has happened in the last 20 years. We went from discmans to ipods to Iphones. Google is now Google. Youtube was born and bred. The Twilight series were written and made into movies. We have self-driving cars! Doctors can now replace a human heart with an artificial heart and can grow organs with stem cells. Woah.
You know what hasn’t changed in 20 years? The percentage of engaged employees. 20 years ago, a mere 30% of employees were engaged. And today... despite self-driving cars and the iphone 3000, still only 30% of employees are engaged. Where did we go wrong? Why have we let this happen? If your heart doesn’t hurt for the other 70% of people who are disengaged and actually don’t like their jobs... then your wallet will. So what do employee engagement and chick flicks have in common? Not a lot, but I bet I grabbed your attention!
Not only have company’s missed out on years of potential creativity, breakthroughs and liveliness of employees, company’s have also missed out BIG on their ROI in the areas of Productivity and turnover. Keep reading to see how much more money you could make with just a little bit of an investment into employee engagement.
If you aren’t engaged in your work, then you are not contributing your full potential. Did you know that an employee is said to create 3x their salary in revenue contribution? Did you also know that most people are only using 74% of their potential?
Say Harry makes $60,000/year. With salary and his revenue contributions, that's $240,000. Harry is a fun person, but he feels forgotten at the company. He doesn’t have friends at work, he is isolated in his corner cubicle and his manager can hardly remember his name. Harry shows up at 9am on the dot and leaves at 5pm on the dot. Needless to say, Harry is not part of the 30% of engaged employees in America.
Why does this matter? Again, if your heart doesn’t hurt for Harry... then your wallet will. Because Harry isn’t engaged, you are only getting 74% of what he is capable of. You are leaving over $62,000 of your investment in Harry on the table.
A small investment into employee engagement could increase productivity by 21%.
Sally is a friend of Harry’s and works at a company down the street. Sally has been working here for 8 months. She feels like she is putting out some good work but has never once been thanked for it. She still only knows 5 people’s names and her manager doesn’t know a thing about her. Sally really wanted to make it to a year at the company, but if the company doesn’t make her feel like they need her, then why does she need the company?
To no one's surprise except for her oblivious managers, Sally turns in her two weeks notice. Turnover costs the company 100% of a person's salary. With Sally’s salary of $60,000/year... you just lost more than you made.
Sally was 1 of 5 people that left the company that month. And just like that...$300,000 walks out the door.
We know those are a lot of numbers to crunch in the Notebook, but the return on investment that you are missing out on while not investing in employee engagement is too much for us to bear. We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again...a little investment can go a long way.
What if there was a way that Sally could meet other people at the company? Just because she doesn’t have a best friend on her team doesn’t mean she couldn’t throughout the whole company. What if Harry’s manager took the time to get to know him, and coach him through some of his projects. What if Sally heard the long awaited words “thank you - you did great work here” on the last project she turned in?
So how do you engage your employees? Don’t think we’d leave you to try to find out at your best friend's wedding--although we hear there’ll be quite the chase. Check out this blog post: Employee Engagement - 4 Crucial Employee Engagement Strategies and start getting the full return on your investment with your people!
