Keeping Engaged Employees

There has been a lot of talk about employee interaction or employee engagement. Human resources is talking about it because this is so costly not to have engagement. The McKinsey report, Forbes, Harvard Business all know that this costs billions of dollars a year to have employees disengaged. The numbers are staggering when seeing that the Gallup poll estimates it to be about 65% of employees disengaged in the United States alone, let alone the world.

It seems though that what is not being talked about is how to fix it. This is the area that is given by humans. Some call it “discretionary effort”, “conscious giving”, “going the extra mile”, giving 100%, and of course engagement. It is not something that can be bought or forced by intimidation and can be subtle as it slips away. When employees feel that they have little worth, are treated poorly, or feel the company or manager does not care (to name a few), the human reaction will be to retreat. Of course this will happen because of preservation. Thus the productivity will slip along with less involvement. Sure the minimum will get done to keep the job but normally the extras will begin to fade.

This will not be a quick fix by putting in an adjustment here and an adjustment there. Instead it must become a way of being having the frontline manager become the advocate and foundation for the frontline teams. The frontline manager needs to be trained to become the coach of these employees. This is a mindset change by companies putting the emphasis on the frontline managers that directly influence the frontline employees. This is the biggest cost to companies and the face of companies to the customers.

It is hard to imagine why this is not getting attention right away with the immense loss in revenue that occurs.