What Unhappy and Disconnected Employees are Costing Your Business

[caption id="attachment_951" align="alignright" width="200"] Disengaged Employees[/caption]

Measuring the True Cost of Poor Employee Engagement

Have you looked around at your employees lately and notice frowning faces instead of normally content ones? There’s a good chance that low employee engagement could be the cause, and it’s costing your business. According to the Gallup State of the Global Workforce study, 87 percent of employees worldwide are either not engaged or actively disengaged from their organizations. The cost of all this non-productivity is close to $450 to $550 billion in lost business just in the US alone, with even higher numbers for the UK due to poorer engagement levels. With less than 23 to 30 percent of a workforce actually excited about performing the various tasks of the organization, what is this doing to your bottom line? It’s time to get smart about employee engagement, to understand and make the most of this valuable aspect of employing people.

How can you tell if an employee is disengaged?

There are several key indicators that trouble is afoot, including:

• Increased employee complaints, conflicts, and problems with peers and management
• Failing to meet performance metrics by becoming disconnected from company objectives
• Frequent missed work days due to personal reasons such as stress or illness
• Problems with customer service and a drop in sales efforts
• An overall poor attitude or outlook on the job and the company

These are just some of the factors that may be obvious to the human resource team, but there are many insidious factors that present when employees are disengaged. You may note higher than normal employee turnover rates or the loss of customers when it’s too late to do anything about it. These cost your business much in terms of revenues and reputation. When employee engagement is done well, and measured with real time data, the results can be much more promising for your business. The before mentioned Gallup poll indicated that organizations that have high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction report 22 percent higher profitability, 25 percent lower turnover, and 48 percent fewer safety accidents on the job. These factors alone are worth investing in the happiness of your best assets – your people.

How can you know if employee engagement is well?

There are some signs that employees are happy with the work they are doing, and this translates to higher revenues, better productivity, and increased employee retention. The signs of things going well, include:

• Employees who arrive at work on time daily, ready to work hard to meet company goals
• Better recruitment efforts as the company builds a positive reputation in the industry
• Increased success with new sales and customer acquisition efforts
• Fewer workplace incidents involving conflicts and injuries

Aren’t these the aspects of being in business that matter the most? What it comes down to is having a system for measuring employee satisfaction with real-time data, instead of reacting to negative factors. This helps the HR team to be proactive and take care of any problems before they reduce company profits.

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Learn how Thymometrics’ world leading real-time employee engagement surveys can affect your bottom line by emailing info@thymometrics.com, calling +1 646 760 9323 (US) or +44 (0) 1223 750 251 (Europe) or visiting thymometrics.com. Image courtesy of zdiviv at FreeDigitalPhotos.net