Only 23% of your workforce is actively engaged—and that’s an all time high.
The Gallup State of the Global Workplace report recently reported that 62% of employees are disengaged—with another 15% actively seeking new positions. If you’re a manager of a large team, you likely won’t find this news surprising. In many of Cadence’s conversations with leaders we coach, how to motivate employees is top of mind.
And this is why: when your team isn’t engaged, you deliver less innovation and you’re not solving the problems you’re taxed to solve. Poor engagement results in more and more employees checking out. When employees start delivering lower quality work it affects the rest of the team too, reducing morale and productivity. Gallup estimates $8.9 trillion is lost in productivity worldwide.
What Causes Low Employee Engagement?
There are two major factors that impact employee engagement:
1. Employee well-being.
2. Manager quality.
These two factors are deeply linked. Employee well-being and engagement increases under a strong manager.
Be Proactive About Your Employees’ Well-being
If your employees are burnt-out, struggle to take time off, and are constantly under high stress, they will hit a point where they completely disengage. Unfortunately, telling them to take tomorrow off in one breath but then demanding they deliver a report by morning doesn’t help. If you have given them more than 40-hours worth of work in a week, you can’t then turn around and encourage them to “log off early on Friday.”
As a manager, you need to ruthlessly prioritize the workload and deliverables of your team. Help them deprioritize and drop deliverables so they can focus on the projects that are needle-movers.
Have Clear and Consistent Expectations
Another big cause of stress caused by managers is in how they react to mistakes or negative results. I see many leaders say “I encourage risk taking” but then berate an employee who took a risk that turned out poorly. While we want to encourage well thought-out risks, a risk is never guaranteed to have positive results. It’s a hypothesis that is tested and those results inform the next test or hypothesis and so on. It’s information gathering.
If you tell your employee that you’re disappointed in them for taking a risk, they have no reason to try something new ever again. As a manager, instead ask what was learned from this test. Celebrate the new information and how that will impact the next steps.
Creating a positive environment where employees are open to sharing wins and losses with you is key. Instead of asking “What went wrong?” ask “What did we learn? What changes are we making because of this? What do you recommend we try next?” By being curious, you’ll be able to turn challenging conversations into productive ones.
Foster a Supportive Team Environment
The other part of this is how you talk about it to your boss or team members. If they ask, “What went wrong?” and your reply is “Michelle made a dumb decision”, that informs how other people will interact with Michelle moving forward. It also reflects poorly on you—you look like a bad manager for letting it happen.
Instead, reply in a way that focuses on what you’ve learned. For example, you could say something like, “Based on X data, we thought it was worth trying. It didn’t have the expected result, but we learned a lot about the customer base that we didn’t know before. We’re trying Y next because of it.” With that reply, you take responsibility with your team and turn it into something positive.
When you communicate like this, your leader knows you have the team under control. Plus, your team understands you have their back and that will encourage them to innovate. Knowledge of this support will also ease their stress levels, boost their well-being, and ultimately, employee engagement.
Intentional People Leadership Goes a Long Way
At the end of the day, once a team member is job hunting, you’re not likely to win them back. But you have a chance to re-engage that 62% who are uninspired. Making small changes in your reactions and words will have a big impact on your team’s engagement.
