Until recently, I did not know that Modern Survey released the results of its Fall 2013 Employee Engagement Study (“State of Engagement: Unveiling the Latest Employee Engagement Research”) on December 3, 2013.

The study finds that while employee engagement is improving, fair pay and growth opportunities matter more to employees than in previous years, and more employees are actively looking for new jobs.

Most notably, the study, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. employees, found that employee engagement is improving. Modern Survey defines engagement as the degree to which employees are psychologically invested in the organization and motivated to contribute to its success. Engaged employees devote discretionary effort toward attaining organization-wide goals. In this fall’s study, engagement went up a full three percentage points compared to six months ago. The percentage of disengaged employees dropped by five points compared to six months ago.

Here’s what caught my eye:

o Only 13% of workers polled felt “fully engaged” (maximum effort; high loyalty)
o 26% felt moderately engaged (moderate effort; moderate loyalty)
o 34% considered themselves underengaged (just adequate effort; little loyalty)
o 27% felt wholly disengaged (minimum effort, looking/leaving)

Modern Survey also found that the drivers of employee engagement are changing. The study shows that employees’ top driver of engagement is a feeling of being able to grow and develop at work. This is a marked change from recent survey data; for the past three years, the top drivers of engagement were belief in senior leadership and confidence in the future of the organization. Modern Survey President and Co-founder Don MacPherson explains the results this way: “For the past few years, we’ve been shocked out of what we normally want, based on fear and lack of security. Now, as the economy has steadied, employees are focused more on the personal aspects of work — how work makes them feel and how they can grow. These new results suggest that the U.S. workforce is returning to a state of normalcy after several years of uncertainty and instability.”

Other leading drivers of employee engagement revealed by the study are “organizational values guiding behavior” and “fair pay.” Neither of these factors has been consistently in the list of top engagement drivers over the past few years, but now they’ve both returned to the top five.

Finally, the study shows an uptick in the percentage of employees — both engaged and disengaged — who are actively looking to leave their current organization: 25 percent of the U.S. workforce is actively looking for a new job. “That’s a warning sign for business leaders,” MacPherson says. “What is most disturbing is that the same percentage of disengaged employees are looking for a job elsewhere as six months ago, but significantly more moderately engaged and fully engaged employees are looking. It’s important to understand who your top performers and most engaged employees are and make sure you’re having conversations with them about their futures with the organization. Losing a fully engaged employee is painful for any organization.”

To register to receive the full study results from Modern Survey, please click here.

I also urge you to check out the abundance of resources provided by Employee Engagement Network. Here is a direct link to EEN.