There’s an ongoing crisis of employee disengagement across organizations. Leaders are largely unable to accurately gauge when an employee lacks motivation or loyalty and is simply going through the motions. But as is revealed in The Engagement Illusion, part of Right Management’s 2024 State of Careers report, employees want to be fully engaged—they just need the motivation to do so.
The Engagement Illusion: Gauging Employee Motivation & Loyalty
As part of our 2024 State of Careers report, Right Management interviewed more than 1,000 employees and 400 leaders in the United States and Canada. What this revealed is that there’s a significant disconnect between what leaders think is happening and what employees are feeling.
The Engagement Illusion is real, and the gap is only widening. When asked about employee engagement, 83% of leaders said they see their workforce as being fully engaged. In contrast, less than 50% of employees polled consider themselves fully engaged with their work. A staggering 29% of employees say they’re disengaged.
The disconnect comes from, among other things, a lack of love for the work being done and a lack of challenge. Because of this, leaders also overestimate employee loyalty—nearly half of employees polled say they would be open to taking a new job. And that demonstrates that a lack of engagement and motivation can lead to a lack of loyalty and issues with retention.
“The strong disconnect between leadership perceptions and employee reality is deeply concerning,” says Karel van der Mandele, SVP of Right Management North America. “This should be a wake-up call to all leaders. Their efforts to build successful organizations will be doomed if they don’t embrace reality.
The reality is that in order to drive engagement, leaders must invest in employees. Employees who are more invested in their organizations are aware of available growth and development opportunities, are excited by those opportunities, and have a sense of the career path available to them. By focusing on developing the skills and building on the ambitions of your workforce—particularly those middle employees who are 3-5 years into their tenure—you can provide the support necessary to improve retention and productivity.
Explore Right Management’s 2024 State of Careers Report
The Engagement Illusion is part of Right Management’s 2024 State of Careers report and is available now as a free download. To learn more about employee engagement and how Right Management Florida/Caribbean can help foster it, contact our team today.