Portland-based consultancy Happy Brain Science may sound soft and fuzzy, but founder Scott Crabtree says everything he shares with clients about employee engagement is founded in proven scientific research. He cautions that it’s wise to be a little wary about the warnings from consultancies such as Gallup and Hay Group about the risks of employee disengagement. After all, these companies want to sell expensive services to fix that problem.
Even so, Hay Group case studies comparing high-engagement organizations to low-engagement organizations report employee performance increases of 40 percent at high-engagement companies, customer satisfaction rates that are 18 percent higher and financial success up to 4½ times better. Employee turnover, meanwhile, is 14 percent less. “Even if you cut those numbers in half — and I’m not suggesting you need to — there are huge gains to be had by engaging employees,” Crabtree says.
According to a CareerBuilder study, 69 percent of employers say they’ve been negatively affected by a bad hire in the past year. Forty-one percent believe this cost their organization over $25,000, while 24 percent said it cost them more than $50,000.
“People don’t invest their best simply to get the job done. They invest their best because they care,” says Tanveer Naseer, a leadership coach who blogs at TanveerNaseer.com. He cites a Dale Carnegie Training survey of more than 3,300 employees worldwide in which 44 percent said they will be looking for a new job in 2017.
“What we really need to take note of here is not whether 40 percent of our employees might leave our organization in 2017. While these employees are doing the work that has been assigned to them, they’re not fully committed to giving their best efforts toward helping you achieve your vision or shared purpose.”
