Engagement has hit an 11-year low, especially among the youngest workers and those who work remote or hybrid.
It’s a critical metric and one that leaders and organizations pay close attention to—for good reason. It’s correlated with greater productivity, retention, customer service, safety, quality of work and profitability.
But engagement is also linked with better experiences for people. When employees are engaged, they tend to be healthier and have higher levels of esteem, fulfillment and happiness.
Engagement is good for business, but it’s also good for people.
Sobering Stats
The specifics of the data are sobering. In fact, only 30% of people say they’re highly engaged, and 17% say they’re actively disengaged—a low of 11 years. That’s a ratio of almost two to one: For every two people who are engaged, there is one person who is actively disengaged, according to Gallup.
Those under 35 are most affected—with Gen Zs (age 27 or younger) even more greatly impacted. Those who work away from their colleagues—remote or hybrid—are also hit hardest, based on the Gallup data.
As the landscape of work shifts—with new patterns about where, when and how people are working—engagement can be more of a challenge. Employee demands and expectations have risen, and leaders must shift their approaches as well—creating more intentional experiences while driving results and navigating high levels of emotional labor.
MORE FOR YOU
New Rules for Engagement
In addition to the classical ways to affect engagement, from creating the conditions for learning and growth to meaningful relationships, there are some new rules for engagement as well.
1. Proximity
Proximity is a key way to drive greater engagement and it is especially important today, with hybrid and remote work. Proximity is when people feel close, known and familiar. And proximity can be both literal and figurative.
You have proximity to the person you sit next to regularly when you’re in the office, but you can also have a sense of proximity with the colleague you’re on video calls with regularly or with whom you’re in close email contact.
We have a cognitive bias toward familiarity and tend to be more accepting of people (and art, music and food) that are more familiar. We also have a cognitive bias toward recency—in which we tend to keep people (and things and events) more top of mind when they happen more frequently or recently.
In addition, we tend to follow through on work and be more responsive to people we know and feel close to (either literally or figuratively).
All of this affects engagement. When we’re connected with colleagues, get to know them and understand how our work connects with theirs—and how they’re relying on us—we will be more engaged.
You can enhance people’s senses of proximity by setting clear guidelines about when they should be in the office and—even more importantly—communicate why. Facilitate the process of coordinating when people will be in, based on whom they work most closely with. For example, certain departments may want to agree on core hours for office work.
Build team relationships and perceived proximity by organizing social time together, but also creating affinity groups where people have common interests and can support each other. Give people meaningful work that demands they collaborate. Protect time at the beginning or end of meetings to check in or check out with personal moments to connect and get to know each other beyond the project plan.
2. Presence and Attention
In inspiring engagement, presence and attention are also primary strategies. With everything coming at us and our always-on environments, attention is the most scarce resource. When you’re undistracted during an interaction, it drives positive relationships, motivation and engagement.
In addition, when leaders are present and accessible, they build trust. And when people are present together, they are likely to pick up on each other’s energy and be more productive, according to research published in the Journal of Labor Economics.
In addition, productivity tends to positively affect engagement and satisfaction, according to research published by the Association for Psychological Science. And engagement in turn drives greater satisfaction and productivity. The three experiences—productivity, satisfaction and engagement—reinforce each other.
Tune into employees and pay attention to how they’re showing up. Check in, ask questions and listen to how they’re doing. When employees reach out, respond quickly and thoroughly. And connect them with resources when they need support beyond what you can provide.
3. Performance
Another way to drive engagement is to create the conditions for great performance. People will engage when they are energized by what they do, and when they have clear expectations. In addition, employees will experience more engagement when work is aligned with their current skills, but also with challenges which stretch their capabilities.
Interestingly, in the Gallup study, there were some top-performing companies that had an average of 70% of their employees who were engaged—more than seven times the average across the U.S. One of their strategies was to combine flexibility with accountability, and give people coaching to support their performance.
In fact, when organizations offer more flexibility, they perform better, and when they offer greater choice and control they do as well. But this must be combined with accountability, because people want to know their skills matter and that companies are counting on their deliverables and contribution.
4. Pizza
In a list of important elements for engagement, pizza may seem superficial at best and flippant at worst. But it actually matters more than you might think—especially when it is part of a broader approach to embedding practices and norms that support wellbeing.
Academic research has proven that when people eat together, they build community, increase trust, enhance feelings that life is worthwhile and expand happiness and satisfaction—and all of this fosters engagement. People feel trusting toward their colleagues and positively obligated to them. And they feel motivated to give their best.
The top-performing organizations in the Gallup data also provided multiple services and resources to support wellbeing.
People tend to behave based on reciprocity. When we receive, our instinct is to return. As a result, when organizations provide for experiences and wellbeing, they energize people to provide their best efforts, in turn. Of course, organizations should offer the best for people because it’s just the right thing to do—but it’s also related to engagement and performance because of our human preference for reciprocity.
Create the conditions for wellbeing by providing food (including pizza!) and offering places with daylight, views and natural elements as well as places for privacy, collaboration, learning, socializing and rejuvenating. Provide benefits which offer all kinds of choices for a variety of needs and priorities. And consider wellness programs—from mediation to financial planning.
5. Purpose
Purpose is a gold standard for engagement—so perhaps it’s the least novel strategy here—but it is significant. When people feel a sense of purpose, it translates into all kinds of payoffs from productivity to wellbeing.
The benefits of purpose are striking.
- With greater purpose, people engage more deeply and companies who articulate their purpose more clearly, see greater growth, global expansion, successful product launches and successful transformation efforts, according to research published in Harvard Business Review.
- In addition, when leaders behave with purpose—sharing a vision, committing to stakeholders and demonstrating strong morals—employees are able to engage and they are happier and more productive, according to research conducted by the University of Sussex.
- In addition, with a greater sense of purpose, people have lower levels of cardiovascular disease and greater longevity, according to a study published in Psychosomatic Medicine.
- In addition, people experience less loneliness and make healthier lifestyle choices, according to research at the University of Pennsylvania. When people have higher levels of physical, cognitive and emotional wellbeing, they can engage and contribute for their own benefit (esteem, fulfillment) and the organization’s benefit.
Create purpose by reinforcing a bigger picture and clarifying how each employee’s contribution is making a unique contribution to it. And be sure purpose is about people. Beyond committing to financial targets, what will get people out of bed in the morning is knowing how their efforts make a real difference for others.
Enhancing Engagement
Engagement requires all kinds of intentional investments in people—and considering the holistic experience from proximity, presence and performance to pizza and purpose—will make a meaningful difference in the outcomes that result.
