“80% of Employees are not Committed to the Mission of their organization” – Holy Mackerel!  Let’s talk about Employee Engagement.

(First, my apology.  I read the statistic below about employee engagement, but can’t remember where, and failed to save it in my “to blog” filing system, and I can’t remember any specific quote accurately enough to google and find the article.  So, I am going to ask you to trust me that I actually did read this in the last few days.  I promise that I am telling the truth that I did in fact read this somewhere.  And to the author of the study and news item, my apology for not giving you credit).

(from Wikipedia):  According to Scarlett Surveys, “Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work”.

OK – here is the problem.  Employees are not very engaged.  The number of highly engaged employees is dropping.  And there is no shortage of employee engagement efforts, so maybe employee engagement is a deeper issue than an “employee engagement initiative.”

But here is the statistic that gobsmacked me in the last few days when I read it (see above).  Current findings reveal that over 80% of employees have practically no level of commitment to fulfilling the mission of their organization. 

And that number of “no commitment to the mission of the organization” employees is on the rise.  In his 2009 book, Engaging the Hearts and Minds of all Your Employees, Lee Colan quoted that year’s findings from Gallup:

“74% of employees are either indifferent to their work or actively disengaged.”

In other words, the average employee has a job, but not a mission, and certainly not a calling.

Now, this is pretty understandable at this time.  With companies closing locations; with the future of so many organizations in such doubt (how would you like to go to work every day at American Airlines at this moment?); with the on-going tendency to cut jobs and then more jobs and then more jobs in company after company; with unemployment at high levels, and people worrying about their personal futures…  In other words, there is only so much emotional energy available to invest in one’s life, and with worries like these, there is not much emotional energy left over to invest in fulfilling the mission of the organization.

There are exceptions, of course.  There are great organizations that have succeeded.  Their people are truly engaged, genuinely committed to fulfilling the mission of the organization.  But not many, and even some of these see an ever-shorter life-span with their employee engagement success.

Now, you ask, what should we do about this?

I don’t know.

I don’t know, because I think the decline in employee engagement is part of the overall uncertainly in the economy.  And it is also part of the new normal in the career path department.  When so few people work for decades within the same organization, it is tough to be truly and thoroughly committed to the success of the mission with such “short-term” stops, moving from one organization to another…

And, overall, the workforce is running scared.  The number of unemployed; the number of underemployed; the number of folks who work more than one job…  How does a person commit to the mission of one organization when that person runs from job one in one organization to job two in another organization?

It is a genuinely daunting challenge.  But, I do have a few suggestions.

#1 – Leaders need to be honest about the health, and the plans, of their organizations.  If a company is looking at more layoffs, they need to be upfront about it.  And if there are “safe areas,” they need to be upfront about it.  Uncertainty, coupled with a lack of transparency (i.e., the act of keeping everything hidden until after the fact), are real employee engagement killers.

#2 – Help all employees know that their work is meaningful, even if only for this month, this year…  How does this work make a difference in someone’s life?  The answer to that question may provide the greatest sense of fulfillment, thus lead to the greatest level of engagement.

#3 – Do a better job building a successful company.  This is a “well, duh” observation, but one I want to stress.  If the leaders of a company are not working very, very diligently to build the most successful company they can, then what chance do the “regular employees” have to be part of a thriving organization?

And, so, maybe the single most important decision top leaders can make is this one:  do we have the leadership team in place to build an organization that creates high employee engagement?  If not, then it’s time for some leadership replacement to happen.  Now!  If the leaders aren’t sure how to make it work, the employees will certainly not be very engaged…

Go back to that figure:  over 80% of employees are not committed to the mission of the organization.  That is a serious problem.  We’ve got some work to do in a lot of organizations throughout this country.