Employee Engagement by Numbers

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (www.cipd.co.uk) is the professional body for HR and people development and has more than 140,000 members worldwide. Twice a year the CIPD commissions an ‘Employee Outlook’ survey, conducted by YouGuv, among 2000+ UK employees to identify their opinions of and attitudes towards working life today.

It always makes for interesting reading as it covers bags of data around job satisfaction and employee engagement, employee attitudes towards senior leaders and line managers, organisation purpose, opportunities for employee voice, health and well-being at work, performance and pay, learning, development and skills, financial well-being and job-seeking.

The headline news from a recent survey is that ‘more needs to be done to improve employee development and career progression’ – over 30% of employees say they are unlikely to fulfil their career aspirations in their current organisation, over 25% disagree that their organisation provides them with opportunities to learn and grow, and a similar amount are dissatisfied with the opportunity to develop their skills in their job. Additionally, there is also a ‘noticeable implementation gap between the training that employees find useful, and the training they actually receive’.

Employees are most likely to say their managers are fairly poor or very poor at coaching them on the job (31%), keeping them in touch with what is going on (25%), discussing training and development needs (23%) and acting as a role model in the organisation (23%). 

The survey measures employee motivation by agreement with the item: ‘This organisation really inspires the very best in me in the way of job performance.’ The overall net agreement score for this item is very low at +6, with almost as many people disagreeing (31%) as agreeing (37%) that their organisation inspires the very best of them in the way of job performance.

Maybe this is why job-seeking intentions remain fairly high in this survey (almost 25% are looking for a new job)?

I passionately believe that engaged colleagues drive and deliver performance. From the outset of every project that I work on, my goal is to present irrefutable proof to my clients that increased engagement in their companies will equal increased business performance, delivering robust and perky ROI.

Depending upon each client’s desired outcome, key measures of success may be turnover, revenue, sales growth, increased ATV, customer satisfaction and loyalty, staff retention, less absenteeism, shrinkage and so on. Clarity and tracking of such measures means that I can repay the faith in the companies that hire me buy often aligning my fees to results.

Over the last 15 years, my company has compiled an engagement database of thousands of employees across the organisations that we have made a difference to. I’d like to share some of the conclusive findings with you:

• In companies where engagement levels are 75%+, average total shareholders return is up to 300% higher than those with engagement levels of circa 50%. Those companies with engagement levels below 30% posted negative shareholder returns

• The share price of organisations with highly engaged colleagues rises by an average of 16%

• Business units with high engagement have average absenteeism rates of less than 4%. Units with low engagement rates experience average absenteeism rates in excess of 8.5%

• Manufacturing companies with high engagement experience staff turnover of circa 4%. Those with low engagement, circa 15%

• Within the database is a national discount hardware chain. It’s top quartile of stores with the highest employee retention rates enjoy on average 120% more sales and 58% higher profits than the bottom quartile.

To put some of the figures above within the context of the various projects that I have worked on, please have a look at what some great clients of mine including Sir Charles Dunstone, Sir Ian Cheshire and their teams have to say about the power of engagement within their businesses at www.paulstalker.com

As employees, if we know what is expected of us and we can understand the impact that our performance has on a company, we are motivated towards productivity. Underpinning this is our connection to our company’s goals, meaningful communication with our colleagues (especially our line managers), and the opportunity to contribute, grow, develop and progress.

 As employers we need to work in partnership with employees on their jobs and careers and aligning organisational and individual needs. This is where creative thinking and action is needed around development opportunities, skill development and providing wonderful experiences to engage and retain our precious colleagues.

Love The Day!

Stalkie