Jim Harter
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Employee engagement is one of the most popular catchphrases in human resources.
Many companies strive for high levels of so-called engagement — the level of discretionary effort exhibited by employees — only to rarely achieve the desired results. According to research organization Gallup Inc.’s most recent annual “State of the Global Workplace” survey, only 29 percent of employees in the U.S. and Canada are engaged, the highest rate for any region in the world. What’s more, only 13 percent of the total global workforce is engaged, according to Gallup. Poor engagement can most often be traced back to inadequate accountability on the part of managers, a lack of role clarity for employees and an organization’s failure to understand what engagement actually is, argues Jim Harter, chief scientist and engagement expert at Gallup.
What’s the generally accepted definition of engagement?
Gallup started studying this topic in the early 1990s, and we had our official measure finalized in 1998. We measure engagement through the combination of 12 workplace questions that we found have historically predicted all sorts of outcomes that businesses are interested in. Engagement is kind of the nexus between workplace attitudes and performance. It’s really the attitudes that predict if people are likely to show up to work, be highly productive, innovative and profitable.
How can organizations strive to improve employee engagement?
An engaged worker, at a basic-needs level, knows what’s expected of them at work. That actually gets overlooked, according to our data. Just a little over half of workers know what’s expected of them at work. People often come to work wanting to be productive for the most part, and managers either set them up for success or cause confusion. You build on top of role clarity by getting people what they need to do the work, making sure people are in jobs where they can utilize their talents effectively and giving recognition for good work in a way that’s appropriate to them as an individual.
The central theme we’ve seen over all our years of research is that people need to have a manager who encourages their development. About 70 percent of high-engagement workplaces can be traced back to manager quality. We’ve found great managers are effective motivators who challenge their teams to get better. They have high accountability for themselves and their teams. They build really strong relationships and develop the employees through their work. Finally, they’re effective decision-makers who make tough — but smart — decisions.
Is there an ideal percentage of the workforce that should be engaged?
There are two ends of the continuum: engaged workers and actively disengaged [18 percent in North America], those really working against the organization. Then there’s a big middle group of “not engaged” workers [54 percent in North America] who show up, do the minimum and not much else.
The ideal would be to get engagement all the way to 100 percent, but that’s not realistic. We’ve seen some companies that are in the 80 percent range. On average, 64 percent is about the level that the best organizations are at. But I think companies should shoot for 80-plus. We’ve seen organizations get to that level in an authentic way.
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Max Mihelich is a Talent Management associate editor. Email editor@talentmgt.com. Follow Mihelich on Twitter at @WorkforceMax. You can also follow him on Google Plus.