Sure, your employees are showing up for work, but are they, you know, working? CEO’s and managers like to think that a paycheck and couple benefits are enough to get the best out of their employees, but that’s not true. To get a potent performance out of your employees, they need to feel connected to the company, valued by their managers, and respected by their peers. They need to be engaged. 

Why should you care whether or not your employees are engaged? 

Here are 15 statistics that define the importance of employee engagement for any business. 

Our Top 15 Employee Engagement Statistics

Let’s start at the top: 

 1) 85% of Employees Are Not Engaged At The Workplace 

According to a 2017 Gallup poll, 85% of employees stated that they were not engaged at work. This means only 15% of employees claim to be engaged in the workplace.

How does this 85% non-engaged employee rate impact your business?  

Performance

Engaged employees are more productive. 

2) Engaged employees are 8% more productive, and 15% less likely to leave their jobs than their non-engaged peers. 

As a team, this translates to an even higher level of productivity.

3) Another survey from Gallup found that engaged employees make their organizations 17% more productive and 21% more profitable.

Retention

At this very moment, over 33% of workers are searching for their next job. 

That’s right, whether it’s casual or active, 1/3rd of your workforce is thinking about leaving your company for another opportunity. 

And it’s not necessarily for a pay increase. 

4) Yes, 25% of employees do cite a bigger paycheck as the top reason for quitting their job, but even more (27%) said that they accepted a new position because it allowed them to do more meaningful work.  

Even more telling:

5) 47% of employees actively seeking a new opportunity state that their main reason for leaving is negative company culture. 

6) Thirty-three percent of employees want to leave their jobs because they’re bored.

In other words, most of your employees would accept a lower paycheck if they enjoyed the company culture, were challenged by their job (aka not bored), and were actively engaged in their work. 

Impact on the Bottom Line

Whether it’s a lack of productivity or the revolving door of retention issues, poor employee engagement can have a massive impact on your business’s profit. In fact: 

7) A study on workplace engagement in the U.S found that disengaged employees cost organizations around $450-550 billion each year.

The converse is also true:

8) Companies with highly-engaged employees are 21% more profitable than companies with low employee engagement. 

On top of streamlining profitability, revenue is also impacted:

9) Strong company cultures, that actively worked to drive employee engagement, grew revenue by, on average, 682% during an 11 year study.  

The more engaged your employees are, the more money your business can make. It’s that simple. 

So, How Do You Build Employee Engagement? 

Okay, so we know that employee engagement is essential, so how do we engineer a culture that drives employees to be more engaged in their work? 

Here are a couple of ideas:

10) Employees are 4.6x more likely to perform their best work if they feel their voice is heard at work.

11) 82% of employees stated they would be more loyal to their employers and more engaged at work if their work provided flexible work options.

12)  Taking on new challenges could make your employees more likely to stay with the organization, according to 83% of employees. 

13)  Having a strong belief in senior leadership was stated as the strongest engagement driver, according to a survey from Modern Survey.

14)  Sometimes a simple thank-you is all it takes: 70% of employees say that morale would improve if managers showed more gratitude. 

15) And lastly, consider being more transparent. 30% of employees said their manager does not foster a culture of open and transparent communication, which can have a negative impact on employee engagement.

While we can’t train your managers to mind their P’s and Q’s, there is one solution we provide that can help your company build a more engaged workforce: an employee advocacy program. 

How An Employee Advocacy Program Can Help Improve Employee Engagement

In an employee advocacy program, your employees and internal stakeholders use their personal social media accounts to help amplify and distribute your content. Essentially, they sign up to join your account, and then when you have new content to share or announcements to make, they receive an email asking them to share that content.

How does this help employee engagement, you might ask? 

Because it provides a connection point between the individual employee and the greater organization. 

Most employees don’t read every piece of content that your business creates. They don’t know about the Taco Tuesday employee happy hours or the volunteer work your organization is doing. They don’t necessarily have insights into what new products are being developed or how their senior leadership is being portrayed as a thought leader. 

By empowering your employees to share this content onto their personal channels, it provides them with an opportunity to engage with that content and understand facets of their company that they might otherwise know. 

Plus, they can have the opportunity to earn prizes or other rewards as determined by your management team. 

The more transparency an employee has into the “going on’s” of the business, the more connected they feel to their business, the more engaged they are at work.  

Start Driving Employee Engagement Today

Ready to start improving your employee engagement? Schedule a call today with one of our employee advocacy experts, and we’ll talk you through how an employee advocacy program can help turn your disinterested workers into engaged employees.