Do You Believe in Employee Engagement? Then Believe That it Has Hit an 11-Year Low

THANK GOD FOR GALLUP, because if it weren’t for them, I doubt that anyone would be focusing very much on employee engagement these days.

Just last week, Gallup came out with their latest installment of “How low can engagement go?” with this headline — U.S. Engagement Hits 11-Year Low.

The subhed on the story told you exactly how bad and how low — 4.8 million fewer U.S. employees are engaged in early 2024.

Loyal readers of this blog are probably rubbing their head and trying to remember where they have read this before, and that’s because they read it right here. Back in January (of 2024!) I hit you with a similar post based on Gallup research with a not so dissimilar headline — The Latest Employee Engagement Numbers are in … and They’re Not Very Pretty.

From bad to worse

THE BOTTOM LINE then was that engagement was near an all-time low.

The bottom line now is that it has slipped further and gotten even lower.

As Gallup describes it:

“Last year, Gallup found U.S. employees were increasingly detached from their employers, with the workforce reporting less role clarity, lower satisfaction with their organizations and less connection to their companies’ mission or purpose. Employees were also less likely to feel someone at work cares about them.

The drop in these employee engagement elements was particularly acute in remote, hybrid and younger workers. By the end of 2023, 33% of U.S. employees overall were highly engaged, meaning they were highly involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplaces.

Unfortunately, the first quarter of 2024 continued this downward trend, with engagement dropping three percentage points to 30% among both full- and part-time employees. This decline represents 4.8 million fewer employees who are engaged in their work and workplace, marking the lowest reported level of engagement since 2013. …

The record-high percentage of engaged employees was recorded in 2020, at 36%. Since that peak, six points fewer, or 9.6 million fewer workers are now engaged.”

You may be wondering — why is this important? It’s a good question, especially as the engagement numbers continue to slide, and Gallup explains it like this:

“Employee engagement trends are significant because they link to many important performance outcomes crucial to organizational leaders such as productivity, employee retention, customer service, safety incidents, quality of work and profitability.”

Engagement continues to go the wrong way

HERE’S MY TAKE: Way back in 2017 — before lockdowns, Covid, a 40-year high in inflation, and the rise of AI — I wrote here that “our efforts to improve employee engagement have failed miserably. Never has so much been spent by so many to do so little.”

The headline on my blog post then describes how I still  feel about engagement now: It’s High Time to Give Up the Ghost on Employee Engagement.

It’s not that engagement isn’t a good concept. I’ve written about it for a long time, and I know that developing highly engaged employees is a huge benefit for companies that can do it right.

It makes sense that it really helps an organization when employees are willing to go above and beyond and give extra effort because they truly care about their jobs and the larger company effort.

But as the Gallup research shows — again — employee engagement numbers continue to go the wrong way. Here’s how they put it:

“The 2024 first quarter engagement finding is the lowest percentage engaged and ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees since 2013, where 30% were engaged and the ratio was 1.6 engaged for every actively disengaged employee. The record-high percentage of engaged employees was recorded in 2020, at 36%. Since that peak, six points fewer, or 9.6 million fewer workers are now engaged.

The recent drops in employee engagement have been most pronounced in the following categories:

• • Younger employees under 35 (down five points), particularly Generation Z employees (down six points) who also feel less connected to their organization’s culture.
  • Employees who could do their jobs remotely but work exclusively on-site (down six points.
  • Employees who exclusively work from home (down five points).”

I wish there was better news on the engagement front, but the numbers tell a story that’s continues to get worse.

I’ll say this once again — “Employee engagement? It’s yesterday’s news. Yes, it’s high time we gave up the ghost in this push to improve it and focus instead on building strong cultures and treating employees better.

Get that right and you won’t need to worry about engagement, because engagement will take care of itself.”

Other trends and insights 

And your latest dose of AI news … 

• Big tech unites around AI workforce training for 100 million workers (From HRDive.com)
• Why Executives Can’t Get Comfortable With AI (From MITSloan Management Review)
• You Could Start Seeing ChatGPT Showing Up More in Your Workplace (From CNet.com)
• Publishers give on-site search a long-needed upgrade in the form of AI chatbots (From DigiDay.com)
• 4 out of 1o C-Suite executives expect to shrink their staffs due to AI disruption (From AdeccoGroup.com)
• Will Chatbots Take Over HR technology? (From JoshBersin.com)
• Business leaders say AI is already changing organizational structure (From HRDive.com)

ALSO: I don’t think much about the future of work in 30 years, but others do. But Monster — they’re still around? — has a new Monster Survey focused on The Workplace in 30 Years. Take a look if you’re interested, but be forewarned because the survey methodology simply says “Monster survey conducted among workers, March 2024.” Well, they might as well have not offered up any “methodology” at all. In my book, a survey that doesn’t clearly and specifically detail the methodology behind it isn’t much of a survey — and not worth putting much stock in.

ALSO-ALSO: I’m not sure it’s a huge surprise that employee happiness has hit a four-year low, but the data and insights from BambooHR.com about this trend in Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work? are worth checking out. It’s also an example of how to do survey methodology that is totally different from how Monster does it as I explained in the ALSO item above. Although the BambooHR methodology could be better, it covers the basics and is far better than how the Monster Survey does it.

Loyal Readers: I’ve been writing this weekly wrap-up for 20 years — from Workforce.com to TLNT.com to Fuel50 and now here on The Skeptical Guy. I’d love to hear what you think, so email me at  johnhollon@yahoo.com.