Alarming Trends in Employee Engagement

In spite of how much great data and content there is about employee engagement, the issue is that companies are not prioritizing or investing in this space. Many companies are pressing forward as though it’ll go away or it’s a passing phase. Employee engagement is a business asset. And like any asset, it requires time and attention.

Everyone is exhausted. Corporate profits hit record highs at the end of last year and, yet, everyone is still losing their jobs. Executives and managers have not done a great job at explaining "the why." If you work hard and you still aren't rewarded for it and are constantly in a scarcity mindset, at some point you completely lose interest.

I think an important factor is making employees, regardless of their title, feel needed and valued. No one wants to go to work and feel like their ideas are not sought out or valued. I genuinely feel when you make others feel needed, you unlock deep engagement and a sense of belonging.

To me, this is not surprising as part of the post-COVID and impact of more Gen Z and Gen Alpha employees in the workplace. Leaders need to face the fact that employees want and demand a different kind of work environment. Leaders today need to take a more comprehensive view of leading their people today and "connect the dots between business strategy, business results and talent" (AKA their people). using a Talent Optimization approach that is required by all organizations to thrive and not just survive. I wrote a LI article earlier this week highlighting this article and some solutions for leaders. Here is a link to the article - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/unlock-your-business-potential-elevate-employee-boost-pattie-zyncc/?trackingId=%2FV6FIdEPQrW32cEtD7KMmw%3D%3D

Great article and lots of great strategies and actions. I believe that there's an element of a broader cultural shift, that is also core to what's happening to engagement as well. People are setting much harder boundaries and expectations around values, ethics, behavior etc. than they used too, and they're enforcing them at a level that would have been unfathomable a few decades ago. Family phycologists have noted how some parents can't wrap their heads around their adult children setting boundaries with them because in their worldview, that just isn't done. They like their parents, put up with mean grandma Sue, age, seniority, and status, provided a lot more insulation from consequences. I think a similar phenomena is occurring in workplace wherein many Sr. folks can't wrap their heads around the scale of this shift in expectations, values and boundaries. Employees are supposed to groan and complain about bad stuff, but you put up with it and eventually you get rewarded. That's how it worked for them, that's how they were successful. Instead, like parents they are seeing consequences that to them seem disproportionate.