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ATD Blog

Why Should You Care About Employee Engagement?

Thursday, September 4, 2014
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Employee engagement has galvanized attention in recent years. In good economic times, this becomes a focal point for retention strategies because engaged workers tend to be more committed to their orga­nizations, work, and customers, and are thus less likely to resign. In bad economic times, engagement becomes a focal point for productivity enhancement, as workers feel demoralized by—among other things— pay freezes, lay-offs, furloughs, and budget cutbacks affecting everything from supplies to technology. During these tough times, workers often feel trapped in bad situations—unable to be happy (or engaged) where they are, and unable to move to greener pastures elsewhere, thanks to limited work opportunities. Whether times are good or bad, employee engagement can—and should—be a front-burner topic that is linked to an organization’s competitive advantage and an individual’s productivity and morale.

Why should you care?

Employers and individuals should care about employee engagement, but they may have different reasons for doing so.

For managers, engagement is a way to combat feelings of alienation, disempowerment, and low morale. Doing work that is not meaningful can lead to apathy, and apathy can lead to disengagement. Research has shown that low levels of engagement can be linked to higher turnover rates, lower customer satisfaction, higher incidences of health and safety problems, and low productivity and profitability.

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Employee engagement programs cannot be everything to everyone. They should be created with good business reasons in mind, but the reasons—and thus the emphasis—of such programs may vary. Before starting an employee engagement program, the employ­er needs to be clear about what goals he wants to achieve. He needs to recognize that some goals must take precedence over others, depend­ing on the organization’s current needs. By being selective, the employer will be better able to focus his efforts to create a cost-effective program that provides the highest value activities possible to achieve the goals and measure the results.

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The following is a list of seven key reasons engaged employees are vital to an organization.

  • Engaged workers are more likely to remain in their organizations and are less likely to resign.
  • Organizations that have engaged workers are more likely to enjoy financial success than those that do not.
  • It is less likely that organizations with engaged workers will have to devote time and money to solving employee performance, turnover, and poor morale problems.
  • Organizations with engaged workers are less likely to have trouble attracting the best people.
  • Organizations with engaged workers have fewer work-related accidents.
  • Organizations with engaged workers have lower stress-related problems that can lead to skyrocketing benefits and workers’ compensation costs, including drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, cancer, heart disease, and so forth.
  • Organizations with engaged workers are more likely to have loyal, committed customers, while organizations with a high percentage of disengaged workers are more likely to have problems with retaining customer loyalty.

Learn more about employee engagement from the latest ATD Press book, Creating Engaged Employees, available now.

About the Author

William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPLP Fellow, is president of Rothwell and Associates, Inc., a full-service consulting company that specializes in succession planning. He is also a professor of learning and performance in the Workforce Education and Development program, Department of Learning and Performance Systems, at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park campus. In that capacity, he heads up a top-ranked graduate program in learning and performance and is the program coordinator for the fully online Master of Professional Studies in Organization Development and Change. He has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 300 books, book chapters, and articles—including 64 books. Before arriving at Penn State in 1993, he had 20 years of work experience as a training director in government and in business. As a consultant, he has worked with over 50 multinational corporations--including Motorola, General Motors, Ford, and many others. In 2004, he earned the Graduate Faculty Teaching Award at Pennsylvania State University, a single award given to the best graduate faculty member on the 23 campuses of the Penn State system. His train-the-trainers programs have won global awards.

His recent books include Organization Development Interventions: Executing Effective Organizational Change (Routledge, 2021 in press), Virtual Coaching to Improve Group Relationships (Routledge, 2021), Adult Learning Basics, 2nd ed. (Association for Talent Development Press, 2020), The Essential HR Guide for Small Business and Start Ups (Society for Human Resource Management, 2020); Increasing Learning and Development’s Impact Through Accreditation (Palgrave, 2020); Workforce Development: Guidelines for Community College Professionals, 2nd ed. (Rowman-Littlefield, 2020); Human Performance Improvement: Building Practitioner Performance, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2018); Innovation Leadership (Routledge, 2018); Evaluating Organization Development: How to Ensure and Sustain the Successful Transformation (CRC Press, 2017); Marketing Organization Development Consulting: A How-To Guide for OD Consultants (CRC Press, 2017); and, Assessment and Diagnosis for Organization Development: Powerful Tools and Perspectives for the OD practitioner (CRC Press, 2017), Community College Leaders on Workforce Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), Organization Development in Practice (ODNetwork, 2016), Mastering the Instructional Design Process, 5th ed. (Wiley, 2016), Practicing Organization Development, 4th ed. (Wiley, 2015), Effective Succession Planning, 5th ed. (AMACOM, 2015), The Competency Toolkit, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (HRD Press, 2015), Beyond Training and Development, 3rd ed. (HRD Press, 2015), The Leader’s Daily Role in Talent Management (McGraw-Hill, 2015), Organization Development Fundamentals (ATD, 2015), Creating Engaged Employees: It’s Worth the Investment (ATD Press, 2014), The Leader’s Daily Role in Talent Management (Institute for Training and Development [Malaysia], 2014), Optimizing Talent in the Federal Workforce (Management Concepts, 2014), Performance Consulting (Wiley, 2014), the ASTD Competency Study: The Training and Development Profession Redefined (ASTD, 2013), Becoming An Effective Mentoring Leader: Proven Strategies for Building Excellence in Your Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2013), Talent Management: A Step-by-Step Action-Oriented Approach Based on Best Practice (HRD Press, 2012), the edited three-volume Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management (Wiley, 2012), Lean But Agile: Rethink Workforce Planning and Gain a True Competitive Advantage (Amacom, 2012), Invaluable Knowledge: Securing Your Company’s Technical Expertise-Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent, Transferring Technical Knowledge, Engaging High Performers (Amacom, 2011), Competency-Based Training Basics (ASTD Press, 2010), Practicing Organization Development, 3rd ed. (Pfeiffer, 2009), Basics of Adult Learning (ASTD, 2009), HR Transformation (Davies-Black, 2008), Working Longer (Amacom, 2008), and Cases in Government Succession Planning: Action-Oriented Strategies for Public-Sector Human Capital Management, Workforce Planning, Succession Planning, and Talent Management (HRD Press, 2008).

He can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at 814-863-2581. He is at 310B Keller Building, University Park, PA 16803. See his website at www.rothwellandassociates.com, his videos on YouTube, and his wiki site at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Rothwell.

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