Sixty-eight percent (68%!) of employees are not engaged in their work. That’s a huge number and comes from a study released by Gallup in 2016. This means that only 32 percent of employees are indeed engaged, which translates to the majority of people in workplaces feeling a bit lackluster and unmotivated by what they are doing every day. Think of how increases in morale and productivity could change if you could nudge that number up even a few percentage points, to 38 percent or maybe even go big at 40 percent.

While this is interesting in and of itself, each organization has to look deeply within to define what an “engaged” employee looks like. There are organizations that go for the “smile quotient,” tracking measures regarding satisfaction and happiness. Those measures are helpful but they lack the information needed to craft next steps. More useful tracking measures can include “I have a boss that guides me,” “I feel like I’m contributing to the team” and “I’m positively challenged by the work I do.”

Some other things to think about or keep in mind when addressing employee engagement studies are:

• Involve your human resources team and key management. The numbers are only a small part of the issue. How you implement next steps will create the desired change in the culture. Accountability, accountability, accountability
• Align some of your questions with your overall business objectives. This will increase actionability and impact
• Be ready for tough talks. You may find that some departments are doing much better than others. That’s OK. This tells you where to put your efforts initially. But don’t shy away from those challenging conversations
• Establish your frequency of tracking up front. You don’t want it to fall off the teams’ radar, especially if the results are less than positive

We love interesting research that helps clients build their businesses. Let’s talk about how your employees can help you get there.