The importance of employee engagement 

Employee engagement is often touted as the panacea for all workplace ills. While it won’t cure everything, it will have a positive impact on your organisation.  

In the era of quiet quitting (which, according to the BBC, means doing only what your job demands and nothing more), employee engagement is more important now than ever. But what is employee engagement? It’s certainly not employee happiness or satisfaction. An employee can be both happy and satisfied and still not be engaged with their work. 

Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to a workplace and its goals. If an employee works for more than just a paycheque and works actively toward an organisation’s goals, they’re engaged.  

What does an engaged employee look like? 

There are many ways to spot an engaged employee, but some of the key signs are: 

• Exceeding goals and expectations 
• Communicating openly 
• Big-picture and collaborative thinking 
• Looking for and sharing ways of improving themselves or the business 

Engaged employees are the people in your organisation who are focused and committed to their work and genuinely care that their effort makes a difference.  

As important as it is to know what an engaged employee looks like, it’s equally important to know how to spot and re-engage a disengaged employee. Because employees who are disengaged are often showing some early signs of burnout.  

How important is employee engagement? 

Very. Employee engagement is a key element to a company’s performance and profitability. The reasons for this are many and varied, but according to research from Gallup, which compared the most-engaged companies with the least-engaged, companies with the most-engaged employees saw increases in the following areas: 

• Customer loyalty +10% 
• Productivity (production) +14% 
• Productivity (sales) +18% 
• Wellbeing +66% 
• Organisational citizenship +13% 

So, it should come as no surprise that when you have stronger customer loyalty, higher productivity, and increased wellbeing and citizenship, company profitability goes up by 23% on average.  

Having engaged employees also greatly reduces staff turnover (by 18%, according to Gallup), which is looking to become an enormous cost for UK businesses over the next 12 months – a £16.9 billion toll.  

What happens when employees are not engaged? 

There are many problems associated with disengaged employees — the most worrying being that disengagement is contagious. If an employee is continuously negative or has a low mood, it can spread to those around them.  

This can have a domino effect, which will negatively impact turnover, collaboration, absenteeism, productivity and most importantly, employee safety. Research has shown that businesses with an engaged workforce see a 70% drop in safety incidents. 

It’s not impossible to engage your employees. 

But it will require empathy, commitment, and open communication. Read about how to increase employee engagement and reap the benefits of a workforce that is committed and willing to go the extra mile. 

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