Employee engagement in American has, and remains, a significant problem for businesses. The vast majority of our employees are not engaged. Only 32% of employees in the United States are engaged, according to a Gallup poll.
That means over two-thirds of employees nationwide are disengaged with their work, a Forbes article reported. By the way, Gallup defines engaged employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.
If you run a hotel, an enterprise that depends on meeting the service expectations of your patrons, or better yet, a hospital where patients depend on employee commitment to ensure quality of care in a safe environment, why would any leader be satisfied with less than stellar employee engagement? Unless, of course, you see your employees not as a valuable asset but rather as an expense necessary to achieve some end. And we wonder why, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on improving quality of care, we are, overall, still stuck in the mud.
It will always be about your people — your most valuable asset. Oh you can produce some good financial numbers that will no doubt please your corporate office or local board, but that result is not sustainable. Without an engaged workforce that is passionate about what they do, you will never be as good as you should be.
FastCompany article on reducing turnover.
