The Importance of Employee Engagement [Updated 2020]

Employee engagement is a factor that affects much of an employee’s overall performance. It’s a principle that some companies take for granted and as a result, they experience more problems with their workers and their output.

Employee engagement is significant as it helps form the work culture of your employees. High engagement produces positive work culture and low engagement produces negative work culture.

This also means that employee engagement affects company revenue and that having a disengaged workforce can be detrimental to an organization. You might be surprised to find out how harmful it can be to not do something about a disengaged workforce.

Here are but some of the consequences of disengaged employees:

Disengagement is costing companies billions each year. According to Gallup, actively disengaged employees in the United States are costing companies $500 billion each year due to loss in productivity.
In a study conducted by the Queens School of Business and Gallup, they found out that disengaged employees make 60% more mistakes, 49% more accidents and they have 37% higher absenteeism rate.
According to Forbes, “disengagement is contagious.”

Without strategies to improve employee engagement, you can be losing not just more revenue but also your talented employees little by little. Here’s what you need to know about the importance of employee engagement.

Employee Engagement Boosts Productivity

Productivity sails the company to success. But with the fierce competition in the world of business, average productivity is not enough. Average productivity creates average results. It takes high-level productivity to achieve high-levels of success.

Companies with high employee engagement outperform those with low engagement and this has been proven by studies and statistics. In fact, according to Business2Community, organizations with high employee engagement outperform those with low employee engagement by 202%.

The reason why engaged employees are able to do more is because they are more committed towards achieving the goals of their company. They understand their role and they feel important knowing they contribute towards the growth and success of their company.

Moreover, according to Gallup, a highly engaged workforce shows 21% greater profitability. Companies that value employee engagement, conduct employee surveys and provide benefits to improve results experience this boost in revenue.

This has been the secret formula top performing companies have been using. If you believe you need to improve the productivity of your employees, make employee engagement part of your company’s central strategy.

Higher Employee Retention

Employee engagement has a lot to do with retention. If employees are not fulfilled at their jobs, they don’t have a strong reason to say. At times, even a pay raise is not sufficient to keep employees.

While employees do work to make a living, money is not the top factor in keeping them. Other factors that have to do with employee engagement such as having a positive company culture and right employee benefits matter more to the workers.

According to EBN, employee exits cost as much as 33% of the worker’s annual salary. Moreover, replacing employees who left their jobs is not easy as well. According to Deloitte, it can take up to 70 days to recruit production workers and up to 94 days for people with specialized knowledge such as engineers and doctors.

According to Recruit Loop, workers who are highly engaged are 87% less likely to leave their organization than employees who are unhappy. You can implement different strategies to boost employee engagement such as recognizing employee efforts and promoting work-life balance.

Healthier and Happier Employees

The quality of an organization can be determined by the quality of its employees. Studies have shown that companies with healthier and happier employees aren’t just more productive but also help reduce expenses such as healthcare costs.

Here are more other benefits of healthier and happier employees:
According to a study conducted by Brigham Young University, absenteeism is reduced by 27% in employees who exercise regularly and have a good diets
According to BYU, workers who eat healthier food are 25% more likely to have better performance.
Better teamwork
Fewer workplace accidents
Better corporate image

Organizations that are highly-engaged practice employee recognition and discourage peer pressure. They value feedback and implement changes to improve employee satisfaction. With improving employee engagement, the leader plays a key role.

Leaders help shape a positive company culture through empowerment and setting a good example. It’s important to be respectful of everyone in the workplace and not micromanage the workers.

Striving to achieve a highly-engaged workforce is also setting up to have healthier and happier employees. Here are some ways on how you can improve employee engagement in your organization:

Be authentic
Recognize employee efforts
Ask feedback
Be empathetic
Offer the right employee benefits
Promote work-life balance

By striving to achieve an engaged workforce, you get to keep your best employees. You also boost employee morale in the workplace. Moreover, you earn the trust, loyalty and commitment of the workforce.

As what Simon Sinek said, “when people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”