Results from the latest quarterly Employee Outlook Survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)* suggest UK workers are now less engaged in, and satisfied with, their jobs than they were just a few months previously.

The survey, conducted by YouGov in January 2013, asked 2,124 UK employees to rate their feelings about their employment at the current time and found the number of employees engaged at work fell from 38 percent in Autumn 2012, to 35 percent in Winter 2012-13, while net satisfaction** scores also dropped from +47 in the previous survey to +45 currently. The survey further reveals that employees feel there is a lack of consideration for their thoughts, particularly when feeding opinions upwards, with net scores falling from +14 to +12. Derek Irvine, vice president of client strategy and consulting at Globoforce, a leading provider of social recognition solutions, has made the following comments. “The fact that engagement and satisfaction levels are decreasing within the UK workforce should be a real concern for employers. Levels of engagement and satisfaction will, at this early stage of the year, continue to decline if employees do not feel that their opinions are taken into account by senior members of the business, so strategies need to be put in place to ensure staff feel they are valued.

“The buck can often stop with the culture of the organisation. If the majority of employees are disengaged and de-motivated the effect can swiftly spread across the business and embed itself in the company culture. However, implementing a strategic recognition strategy that is linked to corporate values can have a profound effect. This peer-to-peer, bottom up approach ensures employees feel they are adding value to their organisation and are being recognised, giving employees a much greater reason to both be engaged in their work and the development of their company. Incorporating crowdsourced recognition means employees are able to share positive feedback about their peers with management in a more constructive way. This ensures staff are aware of how their work directly impacts the company’s performance. “It is worrying that employee engagement has dipped, but this is not an irreversible state of affairs and with the right strategies in place, organisations have the opportunity to boost their employees’ levels of engagement and satisfaction by making them feel their work and opinions are truly valued.”