Employee Engagement Is Stagnant: Now What?

Things are not looking up for the state of the American workplace. According to a Gallup report, only 3 out of 10 employees are  engaged at work.

This lack of engagement reduces productivity and, ultimately, profits. Employee engagement is an important element in the workplace — and one that your company intranet can play a role in.

According to this article, connecting with employees is one way to increase engagement. “Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort,” Sorenson and Garman say.

The intranet can certainly contribute to greater and better workplace connections.

How Engaged Are Your Employees?

Let’s take a look at what the different levels of engagement are, because doing so helps us appreciate even more the importance of having more workers who are engaged. And I quote:

• Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.
• Not engaged employees are essentially “checked out.” They’re sleepwalking through their workday, putting time — but not energy or passion — into their work.
• Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

Only 30% of employees are passionate about their work and are actually contributing to the organization’s goals. The rest are either “sleepwalking” and sabotaging the good work that the minority are putting in.

This cannot be good for business!

Use Your Intranet To Increase Employee Engagement

What can you, the intranet manager, do to help improve employee engagement in your workplace?

We’ve already written a number of related articles on this topic:

1. 1. How to Re-engage Your Employees with the Intranet – 3 ways you can use the intranet to increase employee engagement
   2. The Intranet for Employee Self-Expression: Good Idea or Bad?– We believe employees who are able to express themselves  become more engaged. Here’s why.
   3. Intranet Memes to Increase Engagement & Create Content– Bring your zombie employees back from the dead with exciting and fun memes.
   4. Intranet Signs You Lack Trust in Your Workplace – Lack of engagement may be a symptom of a bigger problem: lack of trust.
   5. Ambient Awareness in the Enterprise: The Intranet’s Role – Ambient awareness is the result when employees connect beyond a work-related level

Do you think your organization reflects the findings of the Gallup study? If employee engagement is low in your workplace, how are you using the intranet to help increase it?