People Operations

CHAPTER 15Closing the Engagement Gap

As we've mentioned throughout this book, highly engaged workers drive  more productivity. They're not tethered; they're unleashed. Whether they improve your product, service, employee collaboration, or brand reputation, engaged workers make a positive impact wherever they go.

The problem is, many businesses fail to engage their workers. Only 40 percent of US employees are actively engaged in their work, while 13 percent are “actively disengaged” and the remaining 47 percent are “not engaged” (Harter 2020). This could be due to poor leadership, toxic work cultures, failing to find and leverage authentic motivators in your rewards and recognition, or even something as benign as companies not knowing how to get the most from their workforce.

But it's crucial that companies engage their workers if they’re serious about increasing employee productivity. Highly engaged workers add revenue, shareholder value, and aids in the resilience of a business during hard times. This means engaging employees isn't just a lofty HR goal, it's a bottom‐line factor for your business.

But how do you pull this off, particularly if you're already wearing a ton of hats and managing a million things to keep the business afloat? It may seem like there would never be enough time in the day to add something as abstract as employee engagement. But that's the short HR view. The long‐term POPS view understands hiring top talent, and engaging those people is the key to competitive ...