My NH Business Review column: Only 34% of American Workers are Engaged in their Work

The Gallup organization has been doing workplace polling for many years, and their latest results — only 34% of American workers are engaged in their work and 16% are actively disengaged — are based on a random sample of some 57,000 full- and part-time employees. The engagement numbers had previously been trending upward. Worker engagement rose steadily from 26% in 2000 to 36% in 2020 before the recent drop to 34%. Disengagement had gone down from 18% in 2000 to 14% in 2020 with the bump up to 16% in 2021.

Writing for Gallup’s Workplace, Shannon Mullen O'Keefe says, “70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the team’s manager.” She suggests five ways to improve engagement including manager development that inspires growth, clarity of purpose about why it matters to perform, communicating transparently, empowering management decision-making, and leaders who stop and listen.

If your employees are not making the kind of effort that helps your organization or business thrive, set aside some time to analyze what might be the reasons. What positive things are you doing that foster engagement and what specifically could you do to improve? Do your managers need more training to better understand their impact on direct reports?

You can read my full column on this topic in the New Hampshire Business Review here.