This week I attended an Entrepreneurs Organisation learning event led by long time EO member Ridgely Goldsborough on the subject of “Know your WHY“.
Here’s a picture of EO Barcelona Learning Chairman Toni Mascaro welcoming over 100 entrepreneurs to the event.
Disengagement: The “Quit and Stayed” Employee
I recently posted about the 4 paths of our working lives – and one path is Quit and Stayed. These category of people are those who have emotionally given up on their jobs, but they still keep sending their body in to sit at the desk and collect a salary.
Ridgely shared statistics on the impact of disengaged employees on a company.
- An indifferent employee costs you $2,246 per year according to Gallup. An actively disengaged employee costs you more than $25,000.
- 33% of American employees change jobs every year. 90% leave jobs for reasons to do with “attitude“, not skills.
- Recruiting expert Brad Smart (author of Topgrading) shares evidence that 1 bad hire costs a company 5 times their salary (and 10-15 times for senior hires)
Apart from the financial cost, there is a painful emotional cost for all those who must work in close proximity to this disengaged individual – they suck your passion. I know that the best way to increase team performance is to remove the disengaged team members.
Achieving Engagement
According to the AONHewitt definition, engaged employees want to:
- Stay (intent to stay with the organisation)
- Say (speak highly of the organisation to others) and
- Strive (make an discretionary effort to deliver results)
Ridgely shared that engaged employees deliver:
- 37% less absenteeism and turnover
- 48% fewer safety accidents
- 41% fewer safety defects
- 21% higher productivity
- 22% higher profitability
How do we Achieve a Culture of Engagement?
Ridgely explained that people are different and seek to express themselves in different ways. If we try to be everything for everybody, we end up frustrated and wasting our time.
Do you understand the different personalities of the people that you work with? I have done so many psychological tests that I assume that everyone knows these tools (I studied psychology at university…). When I was 14, my father brought home a Myers-Briggs test and did it on all of the family.
About me…
- Myers Briggs? I am an ENTP.
- Eneagram? Type 7.
- DISC Profile? Green (D)
- Belbin Team Role? Plant (PL)
What about you? What are you? What types do you get frustrated by?
The Why types
Ridgely worked through a short coaching process where each participant was able to identify their primary “why” from a list of 9 “Whys”. The 9 whys are:
- Contribute
- Trust
- Make Sense
- Better Way
- Right Way
- Challenge
- Master
- Clarify
- Simplify
By the way, I came out as a 7 – Master. My “why” is to seek mastery and understanding above all else.
Infographic: Employee Engagement
One of the challenges of important life lessons is that we need to be reminded every day. Now that I have just written a blog post about how people are different, I am primed to not over-react when I meet someone who is a “5 – Right Way” and has a constant focus on what the precedent is, what is proven, what is low risk… all perspectives that I find tiring. However, tomorrow I will forget and will overreact again.
What can company leaders do to create a culture where we actively seek to empathise with each person’s primary purpose?
I found an infographic that describes the problem of employee disengagement and 6 things that CEOs can do to create engaged employees. Click on the infographic to get a large version. (Personally, I think that the yellow colour scheme is a bit aggressive):
- Inspire employees through purpose
- Align employees behind your strategy
- Develop line managers
- Be Fair (in process, in resource distribution, in relationships)
- Role Model
- Measure And Set Engagement Goals
Read in more detail at the business2business blog.
How Engaged are You?
What do you think? Is your workplace engaged? Are leaders actively creating engagement?