As global HR communities continue to grapple with the current challenge of getting employees back into the offices after the Covid years of working from home, the perennial issue of poor employee engagement levels still lurk in the background.

Unfortunately, global statistics aren’t still great. If we look at the latest 2024 data from Gallup, only 23% of our workforce accounts for engaged employees. The disgruntle, disenchanted category represents 15%, and the fence-sitting, quietly quitting, disengaged group accounts for a whopping 62%.  The US is waking up to the fact that their engagement level is at a 11-year low of 30% – back at the 2013 level.

The analogy of ten rowers in a boat, is quite fitting here. Three people are rowing their heart out, giving all they’ve got, one person is rowing backwards, and five people are just sitting with their arms crossed, adding dead-weight. How fast can your boat go?

The impact of the fence-sitting disengaged category on the global economy, you ask? It is a staggering US$8.8 trillion on global productivity or 9% of the global GDP. That’s a lot, especially considering that many businesses are struggling to offset inflation costs!

Our approach is wrong

It is not just the 2024 number we need to be concerned about – rather, numbers of the last 15 years. When analysing the trend, the engaged category has gone up and disgruntle category has come down. Which is a good thing.  However, the global percentage of fence-sitters has stayed the same since we started measuring it back in 2009.

I agree that reducing the ‘noise’ of the disgruntle group is advantageous, but at what cost? Your return on the investment of your personal energy – the bang for your buck – Is not great. This is where we go wrong. We’ve been trying to disarm the rebellion group. It’s a bit like giving too much attention to your child to calm them down, when throwing a tantrum. Sometimes, just leaving them alone for a few minutes works wonders!

Have we mis-understood this issue?

With my experience working across multiple companies and countries over the last 25 years , I know for a fact that the fence-sitting disengaged employees are only ‘seemingly’ disengaged. While you may think that these employees only turn up in body only, leaving behind their brains at the door, I’ve found that they are waiting to be discovered, leveraged and motivated. And getting them involved is easier than you think.

5 Things do to right to unlock your disengaged employees

1. The right initiatives: Start solving issues that cause frustration to employees and add value to the business. Often, we solve issues that only adds direct value to the business. I’ve often consider giving more weight to problems that matter to employees. The diligent few will lead these initiatives.
2. The right team: Strategically involve a few seemingly disengaged individuals in these initiatives to get them excited by osmosis. The project lead should allocate actions to the entire team. Don’t let the disengaged be passive team members.
3. The right results: Assist the team to deliver rapid results. Simple problem-solving tools such as Pareto factors will provide great insights of focus areas. Create huddles to help teams monitor their results. Progress is infectious.
4. The right share: Get the teams to share their success in formal and informal settings at every opportunity you get. Employees love to hear the success stories from their fellow colleagues, perhaps more than from a leader behind a lectern with PowerPoint slides.
5. The right culture: If you consistently share progress and get teams to showcase their achievements, on a quarterly basis, your workplace culture will soon start to shift for the better. Some of the fence sitters should be changing camps to become engaged. Now you have a growing number of engaged individuals to deploy more initiatives.

The key to turning around disengaged employees is involvement. If you repeat the above steps each quarter, within a year you’ll notice that the ship is turning faster than you expected. With the fence sitters starting to become believers, teams will start feeling happier, more productive, better engaged and running on all six cylinders.

Ishan Galapathy is an operational excellence strategist and the author of UNLOCK

www.UnlockBook.com.au