How Much Are Your Disengaged Employees Costing You?

Calibraint

Author

January 22, 2021

Last updated: May 22, 2023

The Cost Of Low Employee Engagement

One of the key metrics for running a successful business is to build employee engagement. Achieving the metrics may not be as simple as it sounds, in fact, almost 90% of employers find it difficult to manage employee engagement. Some recent statistics show that only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged at their work. The cost of low employee engagement can be a big threat to an organization in the long run.

So what can you expect from this column?

Some surreal employee engagement statistics that’s gonna tell you “How Much Are Your Disengaged Employees Costing You?”

Let’s get started,

Millions of statistics are available on the internet, few undergone with a huge research team while others speculate rumors, and Calibraint being an organization that believes the importance of delivering quality over quantity, here we have listed the most reliable statistics that we came across on the internet.

It Cost Around 500 Billion Dollar Each Year

Disengaged employees tend to lack self-responsibility, the chances of employees getting demotivated is very high, the behavior and poor attitude drain overall productivity.

A survey conducted on workplace engagement before pandemic COVID-19 says low employee engagement costs around $450-500 billion each year in the US alone.

Companies need to migrate towards tools that encourage, monitor, and maintain personal engagement.

Emotionally Disconnected

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplaces says overall, less than 15% of employees are engaged at work. Looking into the stats based on geographic location, Western Europe has a record of 10% employee engagement rate while the UK being poor with just less than 8%.

The figures debit the mindset of the employees at the workplace either the employees see the workplace negatively or compromising to make it through the day.

In simple words, often we connect cost to money but here the cost implies the emotional detachment.

Changing The Myth

If an employer thinks an employee leaves their job only for money, then it high time to bring the real stats into the picture. 81% of the employees leave their job for the right offer even if they aren’t looking at the moment.

Everybody would be familiar with some common causes like office politics, co-worker dominance, lack of benefits but let us get dived into the uncovered truth.

People are looking forward to the ideal opportunities, they feel switching for an engaged challenging job is better than being paid for a disengaged work. 74% of younger employees don’t mind accepting a pay cut for a chance to work at their most desired job. 23% of the employees won’t expect a pay increase working for their best opportunity.

Well, how to overcome this? How to retain the talent?

Again, the solution is to encourage employee engagement. In order to retain your employees, build a happy workplace where they can build a relationship with other people and maintain a work-life balance.

Boredom Biggest Reason

Korn Ferry Survey 2018 says, almost 33% of the employee’s quote boredom as a reason to leave their jobs. And 24% of employees feel the work culture doesn’t fit them. Only 19% of the employee consider leaving the job for larger pay.

Employers need to ensure whether their employees are having enough challenges and variation in their work and this needs to be an essential consideration. The new generation employees need a place where they can learn, explore and upgrade their skills. This knowledge development in fact is a brilliant aspect of the workplace, it gives an opportunity for the organization to come up with a refined profitable product.

Bringing The Numbers,

“How Much Are Your Disengaged Employees Costing You?”

Let us look into the Forbes calculation,

No. of employees working in a small business = 250 people
The average rate of employees engaged at work = 21%
So employees disengaged at work = 198 people

Let’s consider the average salary of those employees is $47,000 and the cost of employee disengagement costs you around $ 3,164,040.

Shocking? but this is true, a poor employee engagement cost around $3 million a year to a small company.

Reference: Forbes

Fixing Measure

Achiever says that only 9% of the organizational leaders are taking enough measures for cultural initiatives. The first step to solve the problem is acknowledging them. You might think numerous reason for your business failure but the put forth reports gives you more insights than what you used to think before. End of the day your employee needs, challenging task, a positive workplace, skill workshops, and a work-life balance.

Achievers’ Chief Workforce Scientist Dr. Natalie Baumgartner explains that engaging with employee feedback doesn’t always need to be time-consuming: “Employees want to be heard and understood”

Calibraint

Author

January 22, 2021

Last updated: May 22, 2023

2