Why are Majority of Employees not Engaged in the Work

Digging through the Root Causes Why Majority of Talent are not Engaged before Reengaging them.  

The latest research pointed out that engaged employees put forth 57% more effort and are 87% less likely to leave their company than employees who consider themselves disengaged. But statistically more than two-thirds of employees are not engaged in their work. Consequently, organizations have begun the survey analyzing the engagement level by function or by the job? Is a researcher more engaged than a clerk checking thousands of invoices a month? Are people in strategy focused organizations more engaged than in process-oriented organizations? What are the root causes of employee disengagement, and how to engage talent to improve productivity, creativity, and overall employee satisfaction?

The studies show that the majority of people are not engaged in their jobs because their talent is not being utilized: Though every employee has individual reasons for not being engaged that is rarely revealed by engagement and exit studies. If you have someone in a role where their natural strengths and talents are being recognized and utilized, they will be engaged. They will also have greater passion because they are doing what they are good at doing. The studies consistently show the importance of using people's natural strengths and talents, although their process of doing this was not on target, therefore, managers are important to making this happen, but you need a common language and a methodology so the individual and the organization knows how to best utilize individuals, and their role on a team.

The importance of the very first corporate experience: A lot of individual’s bias or perceptions on how the corporate world works will be based on that particular first exposure. In order to be engaged or motivated, the employee must believe the organization operates on a meritocracy basis and everyone has an opportunity to work hard and succeed, at the same time the organization is contributing some sort of value and positive influence to society as a whole. A few negative reasons upon employee departure include being mismanaged, not feeling appreciated, management's short-sight vision or wrong judgment, etc. The reality is that the organizational structures and relationships with and between employees were designed for a very different age. It's not just a leadership/ management issue; most organizations are grossly dysfunctional, despite often noble attempts at change by the leadership team. More often, workers are asked to be "engaged" inside and outside the company environment, at the same time, many companies don't have the mechanisms or interest in engaging employees outside the work environment. At the age of digital, businesses today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work

If engagement is low, the team corner of the triangle (quality, process, and holism) is off balance, which can be reflected from the management. Organizations would benefit from creating a culture where employees feel safe in expressing themselves without reprisal, then listening to their internal partners before implementing change initiatives. To brainstorm a few future-driven organizations: 

-The social/digital business with organizational structure becoming flat and agile?
-The learning organization defined at "Fifth Discipline"?
-The self-managed organization.

People are still the weakest link in business success so the influential leadership team can make a difference, especially all engagement is local meaning that the direct supervisor or boss is crucial to the sense of engagement in their group. Implementing a methodology that teaches people how to use their strengths, and the strengths of others in the organization are necessary to get employees engaged. The few companies that buck this trend tend to have very visible, multiple ways where there's a much stronger benefit on the company's side.

Posted in: Organizational structure tuning,Talent Master