Employee engagement the Gallup way

I had a strange day the other day. I had three separate meetings, and all three ended up on the topic of employee engagement. One meeting was with an HR Director, one with a manager, and one with an entrepreneur friend of mine.

Employee engagement, is it still on the top of the agenda? Well, here in Stockholm it certainly seems that way. It brought me to think of a book I read recently (tip-o´-the-hat to Fredric Helgesson who gave it to me), “Now, Discover Your Strenghts” by Marcus Buckingham from the Gallup organization. In the first chapters they share a very interesting fact. They have asked 1.7million employees in more than one hundred companies the following question: “At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?”

How many responded positively to this question? 20 percent. So 80% of the global white collar population do not feel that they get to use their strong sides on a daily basis! And what was most bizarre: the higher up and the longer you stayed at a company, the lower the scores!

They also show how this score correlates to employee turnover, productivity, and customer satisfaction scores. And the jury is unanimous.

To figure out how to address this issue, you really need to read the rest of the book (it is an interesting read), or perhaps a quite intriguing real life case story they published recently.

How are you addressing your employee engagement?