Are Non-Engaged Employees Costing You More than Just Money?

Are Non-Engaged Employees Costing You More than Just Money?

“I arise full of eagerness and energy, knowing well what achievement lies ahead of me” -Zane Grey

That’s how most employers want their engaged employees to feel, however recent studies show that close to 70% of Canadian companies find that employee engagement is a problem, furthermore 82% of organizations feel that there’s a need to address employee engagement.

There are many contributing factors that make up engaged employees, but the single most important factor is achievement, in fact, an AON survey found that over 40% of employees found achievement to be the leading contributing event in job satisfaction.

This was followed closely by recognition with over 30% of respondents feeling that this was important.

Strangely enough pay/salary was way down the list of importance which debunks the theory that reward programs are merely a bribe to get employees to work harder. In fact, recognition is psychological tool that helps employees reach a sense of achievement. There’s an obvious correlation between achievement and recognition: any

employee that is recognized will feel a sense of achievement, conversely, achievement is in part driven by the prospects of recognition.

However, when we look at the average work place we see that only about 1% of the “total compensation” budget is spent on rewards and recognition and many work places don’t even have a rewards and recognition program at all. The same survey asked HR professionals from 750 companies across Canada what total rewards elements are easiest to change in the workplace, 37% of the HR professionals agreed that their wellness and recognition programs were the easiest to change.

When we collectively look at this data it’s surprising more organizations aren’t taking advantage of rewards programs to actively engage employees, especially when notengaged employees cost the US economy over $350 billion a year in lost productivity.

The difference in performance between engaged and not engaged employees can be between 20-50% depending on the complexity of the job performed. When we consider that approximately 35% of the workforce is not engage the cost becomes staggering yet the solution is very simple.