Employee engagement is sure to be at the forefront of any employer’s mind, but how often do you hear someone talking about employee disengagement? You can have a great work environment, but even if 90 percent of your employees are happy and engaged, there are bound to be a few stragglers.
Now, some employers think that one or two unhappy employees won’t have that big of an impact on their business. But even if disengaged employees are the minority, their managers and co-workers still have to pick up the slack for them, bringing down the productivity of the entire office.
Here’s how to spot a disengaged employee — and how to handle the situation.
To keep reading, click here: How to Spot — and Address — Employee Disengagement
Gallup has identified a number of metrics to measure employee engagement. Those metrics can provide a guide to what employers can do to improve engagement. They measure things such as whether employees are clear on their managers’ expectations, whether assignments match up with employees’ best abilities, whether employees have the proper tools for the job, whether employees are receiving regular feedback, whether employees feel like someone cares about them as a person, whether employees’ opinions “count,” etc. All of these metrics suggest avenues that management can pursue to increase employee engagement.
But I don’t trust that any of those surveys are truly anonymous. I have never answered truthfully about anything negative.
Or where I work, complain about bullying to your manager and/or HR and go on a PIP for gossiping and not being a team player – and send a message to the team that it’s better to leave the employer than try to change the micro culture of non-inclusivity for protected classes and everyone else. Then wonder why the department’s retention rate is in the toilet. Reign of Terror = disengagement = I’m Outta Here
If this happened to you, I hope you get out of there soon!
Disengagement can also appear as meticulous rule following. Where bureaucracy is obstructive, people may give up efforts to do real work effectively and resort to passive-aggressive compliance with all the rules, however that may hamper getting actual results. It’s harder to spot than other forms of disengagement because it looks like they’re cooperating.
Another cause of disengagement is not providing the resources needed to do their job. For example, I’m a software engineer without the software licenses I need to use database tools, and a computer that is regularly crashing. I would guess that on days where my computer crashes or the license , I stop caring nearly as much and just kind of work until it wouldn’t bother me to leave for the day. I’d be able to accept if there wasn’t room in the budget for everything, but I’ve been told for the last 3 months that they’ve ordered a new computer, and the license will be purchased “soon”. For a while, I was close to looking for a new job, even though I like what I’m working on, most of the people I work with, and have pretty fair compensation.