You may have heard the news that the level of employee engagement in the US workforce is at a staggeringly low 33%, according to Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace. The good news is it’s higher than it’s been since 2000. The bad news is, it’s old news. The number has been hovering between 26% and 32% since 2000. According to the same Gallup survey, 51% of U.S. employees say they are actively looking for a new job or watching for openings. That means that some of our engaged workers are actively looking too, the very people that contribute the most to the organization’s bottom line. Are organizations missing the mark on employees’ workplace expectations? If so, it’s high time to pay attention as the war for talent is at our doorsteps.
What might it look like if employee engagement doubled? First, we need to look at what is attracting people away from their current jobs and to other employers. Here is a list of the top 5 qualities in a new job that employees are looking for, according to Gallup:
- the ability to do what they do best
- greater work-life balance and better personal well-being
- greater stability and job security
- a significant increase in income
- the opportunity to work for a company with a great brand or reputation
As W. Stanton Smith of Deloitte wrote in “Decoding generational differences: Fact, fiction … or should we just get back to work?”, for all of our differences we fundamentally want the same things out of our work, something he coined as the 3 R’s and 3 C’s:
- Respected – given the opportunity to learn and grow, and to have flexibility and control over our schedule and life
- Recognized – both monetarily and non-monetarily
- Remembered as having made a difference
- Coached rather than subjected to fault-finding
- Consulted on actions that affect us
- Connected to the organization’s mission and how we fit into it
There seem to be some common threads emerging. Organizations that focus their efforts on training their managers and updating existing policies in response to these expectations have a golden opportunity to retain their own top talent, and to attract top talent away from organizations that are falling short of the mark. How do your organization’s HR and talent development strategies support these employee workplace expectations? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section.