On the other end of the scale the highly engaged employees have dropped by 30% from over 15% of the workforce to approximately 10%.* So what is driving this dramatic deterioration in engagement? We need to consider the knee jerk reaction of many organizations. When times are tough they start cutting staff and this has a huge impact on engagement. First off the leaders that are involved in the cutting tend to experience a decrease in engagement and this leads to further disengagement of the staff. One of the drivers of engagement is the organization’s commitment to the employee. When the downsizing starts, employees start to second guess their organization and the commitment it has to employees. Let’s not be fooled into thinking that downsizing only impacts the employees leaving the organization. It impacts all employees including your high performers. The largest drop in engagement has been at the senior levels with the highly engaged dropping from almost 30% to around 13%.*
Another reaction that commonly occurs during hard times, is for leadership and management to start pushing decisions up effectively reducing employee empowerment and decreasing employee engagement. Some organizations stop measuring employee satisfaction and employee engagement during the economic downturn because they believe the economic downturn will produce lower results. Employees are the drivers of any business, it is their productivity, innovation and commitment that allows organizations to deliver superior results. Rightsizing may be the correct decision but think strategically about how you right size and manage the message to employees to mitigate the effects on employee performance. Do not stop measuring and improving employee engagement as it is the most important key to your organization's success.
The good news is that many organizations have recognized the drop in engagement levels with 80% of companies surveyed indicating that engaging employees is a high priority.*
Are you experiencing similar trends in your organization? How are your organizations responding to the decline in engagement?
*Corporate Leadership Council, “Improving Employee Engagement and Performance in the Economic Downturn” (2009)
