When an employee is engaged, they go above and beyond their normal duty. An employee that is going above and beyond will be more productive for your organization, leading to higher profits.
Unfortunately though, many leaders aren’t convinced that it’s worth it to invest in employee engagement.
Here are 12 reasons why employee engagement is worth investing in.
But first…
Want to see how much of an ROI you can get from employee engagement? Our employee engagement ROI calculator will show you exactly how much money you could make.
Companies With Engaged Employees Perform Better
Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202%
The research is very clear. Engaged employees are happier and are more motivated to work harder for you.
If all (or most) of your employees are engaged, think of the possibilities in terms of innovation and collaboration.
One book all leaders should read about this is called Make More Money By Making Your Employees Happy. It has tons of examples of companies that have achieved massive success because of how they treat their employees.
Implement Regular Feedback
Companies who implement regular employee feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than companies that don’t
The important thing to understand with this statistic is that regular employee feedback provides constant clarity to employees.
The key word in that sentence is “regular”. You don’t want to wait until the end of the year or month to give feedback to an employee.
The biggest reason is that employees will be able to have a clear insight into how they’re doing and will be able to adjust accordingly.
What you don’t want, is an employee that’s questioning their own abilities. That causes so much unnecessary stress. That stress will ultimately lead to turnover because they won’t feel comfortable.
If you’re looking for tips to improve the way you give feedback, this post called 8 Detailed Examples Of Giving Employee Feedback could easily help you.
High Engagement = Low Absenteeism
High employee engagement leads to 37% lower absenteeism
There’s two parts to this statistic.
The first part is voluntary absenteeism and the second part is involuntary.
Many people when they’re not engaged and ultimately unhappy will use as many vacation and sick days as they possibly can. They just don’t want to be there. They might call in sick and even make up excuses not to be there.
This is what you obviously don’t want.
The involuntary absenteeism is much more common, much more serious, and unfortunately, not talked about enough.
The stress that comes from hating your job, hating your boss, and ultimately hating your life will cause serious mental issues.
I would highly recommend everyone check out this infographic we put together called 19 Frightening Workplace Mental Health Statistics to learn how serious of an issue this is.
Don’t Ignore Employees
Engagement drops to 2% on teams with managers who ignore their employees
This is a very startling statistic, and is very much related to the importance of regular, frequent feedback like I mentioned earlier.
Employees need to feel that sense of belonging and get the impression that you genuinely care about them.
That feeling of loneliness and isolation is almost a guarantee that engagement on your team will drop significantly.
One study found that being ignored is even worse than being bullied at work.
It’s important that you work hard to make everyone feel included on the team and try to help foster those relationships. If you can do team building activities to make everyone feel included, you’ll have employees that feel like they belong.
Engaged Employees Take Less Sick Days
Engaged employees take less sick days each year (2.69 vs 6.19)
This goes back to the voluntary/involuntary absenteeism concept I was mentioning earlier, but engaged employees will not only work harder for you, they’ll work more for you.
Even if they’re not sick, they might take some time on a weekend to fix something small if they’re interested/passionate about it.
Employee absenteeism (in aggregate) costs a lot of money in lost productivity, so it’s in your best interest to invest the necessary resources into employee engagement.
Higher Engagement Leads To Higher Profits
Increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by $ 2,400 per employee, per year.
While it’s important to invest in employee engagement, you don’t have to invest that much.
With pretty minimal effort you can have happy and engaged employees. The secret is to just be consistent.
Doing some quick math, imagine how a simple investment in engagement would increase profits in a company of 200 people.
If you’d like to see how much you could potentially increase profits by at your company, check out our Employee Engagement ROI Calculator.
Engaged Employees Retain Customers
Customer retention rates are 18% higher when employees are highly engaged
This is exactly what the service-profit chain is all about.
For those of you not already familiar with it, let me explain.
The service-profit chain is the chain going from how you treat your employees all the way to customer profits.
If employees are happy, they’ll provide better service to customers, which will lead to customer loyalty, which will lead to increased profits.
Understand that your customers will never be happy until your employees are.
It’s All About The Managers
Employees who have highly engaged managers are 59% more likely to be engaged
According to research from Gallup, managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores.
This means that managers are really the key to making sure employees are engaged.
If you were going to focus on one area to improve, it would be on training and development for all managers in the company.
That is the single best thing you could do to increase engagement on your team.
Less Theft For Engaged Employees
Teams with high employee engagement have 28% less internal theft
Internal theft is unfortunately a real problem, but when an employee is engaged they don’t want to steal from you.
They genuinely care about the company and feel like they’re part of it, that it’s theirs, so they don’t consider stealing from it.
There is a lot of money (and headaches) that can be saved from having engaged employees.
They Don’t Mind Staying Late
Highly engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to stay at work late if something needs to be done
The important thing to understand about this statistic is that them staying late at work is not forced.
They’re perfectly okay with staying a little late if there’s something they need to finish or if they’re enjoying what they’re working on.
When an employee is passionate about their work, they’re not actively checking the clock, so it’s not even really a question of “staying late”. They don’t even really notice it.
On the other hand, if you’re not engaged, you’re watching the clock more closely, and once 5pm hits, it’s happy hour.
Employees Just Want To Be Happy
36% of employees would give up $ 5,000 a year in salary to be happier at work
Money doesn’t buy happiness.
And of course, there is that very famous study about how happiness peaks after a $ 70,000 salary.
What people really want is to enjoy their lives. Even if you were making an extra $ 10,000 in your salary, if you’re unhappy and hate your job, it’s not worth it.
Instead of throwing money at the problem, what managers should be doing is creating an environment where employees can be their best, authentic selves.
High Engagement = High Customer Retention
Organizations that have over 50% employee engagement retain over 80% of their customers
As we all know, it’s much easier to please a current customer than it is to get a new customer.
In the world of social media and internet reviews, word of mouth is by far your best marketing tool.
Happy employees will give customers great service, they’ll keep coming back, and they’ll tell their friends about how great the service was, leading to more customers.
Do everything you can to make sure employees are happy and have everything they need to do good work. The trick to doing this? Ask them what they need!
Do You Think Engagement Is Worth Investing In?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this in the comments below!
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