In this newsletter, I want to share some insights about the level of engagement of the people, the impact of low levels of engagement on profitability, safety performance, and workplace violence.
In 2017, Gallup, Inc. published their “State of the Global Workplace,” looking at the levels of productivity around the world. They were concerned about the decline in productivity and wanted to develop a better picture of the situation. High productivity is a key to having a good quality of life, and this relates to how involved people are in their work. They found that worldwide, only about 15% of the people are highly involved. This varies from country to country with the highest levels of involvement in the USA and Canada at 31%. Those businesses in the top quartile of employee involvement in their global study are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive. They also have 70% fewer safety incidents, 40% fewer quality incidents, 41% lower absenteeism, and 59% lower turnover. The positive impact of employees being highly involved is huge.
These benefits of high levels of involvement are impressive.
In my newsletters, I have written extensively about the importance of leadership in improving involvement. Leaders focus on building respect, sharing information and making it safe for people to talk together, to share ideas and to build their future together. Leaders focus on change and improvement. Leaders also focus on helping people to see how their work is important for the success of the whole organization; this helps people to develop meaning in their work and builds commitment.
Most people in management positions focus on systems and processes like running a payroll or production line. They want reliability, predictability, control, and stability, which are important for much of the business. But when they apply this approach to people, things go downhill. This approach results in 71% of the people globally being unengaged and 19% being actively disengaged. Morale, safety and engagement are a mess. Managers engage in managership, and this will not solve the problem of building higher levels of engagement.
People in manager positions need to become stronger leaders. They need to spend several hours every day with the people around them, as well as those reporting to them. They need to go into their workplaces, talking respectfully with the people, sharing information, building trust and interdependence, listening and learning together. In doing this with quality, focused conversations, people open up, share ideas and come up with better ways to do their work. When I did this when I was a Plant Manager in a chemical plant with about 1,300 people and lots of hazardous chemicals and demanding jobs, our injury rate dropped by 98%, productivity rose by 45% and earning rose by 300%. The people were involved and committed because they wanted to be. I just set the conditions where this could happen.
I need to emphasize that respect in the workplace is so very important. Lack of respect degrades everything. Lack of respect leads to harassment, bullying, sabotage, fighting, and even murder. The leaders set the tone and the standards. Bullying is a problem in over half of our workplaces and about half the bullying is from managers. This is just unacceptable. Not only does it demean the people, it causes safety problems and wrecks involvement and productivity.
If the people at the top of our organizations really want to improve involvement, the treatment of people, safety and earnings, then they can do it. It is a matter of will. The knowledge and pathways are well known and proven.
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