Gallup released its State of the Global Workforce 2024 report last week and found that employees are at their highest level of engagement, at 23 percent. Unfortunately, 62 percent of the workforce is unengaged, just doing what they need to get by, and 15 percent are actively disengaged, meaning they are miserable at work, may have a lousy manager, are disruptive, and actively seeking a new role. Gallup found one in five employees reported feeling loneliness, anger, or sadness during a lot of the previous day, and four in 10 felt much stress.
Gallup has calculated that this number of non-engaged employees costs employers $8.9 trillion annually in lost productivity globally.
Candidly, you are doing well if 20 percent of the workforce is engaged with your organization’s mission and committing discretionary effort daily to exceed goals and innovate. The trick is getting 30 percent of the workforce to feel this way. Please see my blog on the 80/20 rule, How to get great work from more people.
What I found most interesting is Gallup’s observation that the role of managers in inspiring their workers has never been more urgent because of the loneliness, anger, and sadness of the workforce. Managers are uniquely positioned to know the organization’s strategies and how their teams can achieve company goals. On the other hand, managers know each employee’s specific needs, career goals, and work-life situation.
The problem, according to Gallup, is that many managers are not highly engaged in their jobs. Without being engaged in the business themselves, the chances of managers inspiring and improving the wellbeing of those they lead are low.
Many managers are not highly engaged in their jobs.
(Employee wellbeing, or employee wellness, is commonly defined as the overall health of employees, including their mental, physical, emotional, and economic health.)
Gallup has found that three in ten managers globally are engaged, meaning they feel involved and enthusiastic about their jobs, which is higher than the engagement of non-managers. Gallup’s meta-analysis of more than 200,000 manager-led teams found that more highly engaged managers have more engaged teams. This is crucial because highly engaged teams produce higher quality and quantity of output, have more positive daily emotions, fewer negative daily experiences, and have much higher rates of thriving in their overall lives.
Still, according to Gallup, many managers report feeling anger, sadness, and worry daily, and they experience as much stress and loneliness as non-managers. A significant concern is that managers are more likely than those they manage to be looking for new job opportunities. Gallup concludes that improving workplace mental health starts with the mental health of managers.
Gallup recommends that if a company wants to increase workforce engagement, it should prioritize making managers’ jobs as streamlined, engaging, and fulfilling as possible. One way is to identify and promote the best methods for selecting and developing managers with the talents and skills to effectively coach in the new and changing workplace. Another is reformulating the primary responsibilities of managing, shifting from administrative work to coaching through ongoing conversations with employees and feedback.
Gallup recommends that if a company wants to increase workforce engagement, it should prioritize making managers’ jobs as streamlined, engaging and fulfilling as possible.
Gallup has studied many organizations globally that have already implemented practices to address problems related to manager engagement and wellbeing. Gallup has found that these well-run organizations exist across geographies and industries, with an impressive average of three-fourths of managers and seven in 10 non-managers engaged. Leaders in these top organizations intentionally prioritize the organization’s culture, starting with the quality of managers. According to Gallup, these top organizations place a high emphasis on:
- the process of hiring and developing managers to be effective coaches who focus mainly on goal setting, ongoing feedback, and accountability
- taking a strategic approach by integrating engagement and wellbeing into all stages of the employee life cycle: attraction, hiring, onboarding, performance management and development
- making their support for employee wellbeing visible and consistent, with a holistic approach that integrates benefits and resources across multiple wellbeing domains
Gallup concludes that well-run organizations have shown that leaders and managers can have a significant impact on the mental health of the workforce through the cultures they build.
Learn the behaviors of successful managers.
About Victor
Victor Assad is the CEO of Victor Assad Strategic Human Resources Consulting and Managing Partner of InnovationOne, LLC. He works with organizations to transform HR and recruiting, implement remote work, and develop extraordinary leaders, teams, and innovation cultures. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Hack Recruiting: The Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process, and Digitization. He is quoted in business journals such as The Wall Street Journal, Workforce Management, and CEO Magazine. Victor has partnered with The Conference Board on innovation research. Subscribe to his weekly blogs at http://www.VictorHRConsultant.com