The holy grail of today’s workplace is high employee engagement. According to Gallup’s oft-cited research on the topic, just about one-third of U.S. employees are engaged on the job. That number drops to 13% worldwide, and has held steady for years. Many companies are investing heavily to identify what leads to high engagement in order to motivate employees, thereby increasing their happiness and productivity.
Being Engaged at Work Is Not the Same as Being Productive
The holy grail of today’s workplace is high employee engagement. According to Gallup’s research, about one-third of U.S. employees are engaged on the job. That number drops to 13% worldwide, and has held steady for years. But engagement is often an ambiguous term and could represent either job satisfaction, emotional investment, or advocating for the company. While many studies suggest that increased employee engagement leads to improved business results in aggregate, a deeper look at the data suggests that this may not always be true at an individual level. A study of two Fortune 100 companies finds that whether employees’ engagement correlates with the number of hours worked varies by company. Employees can be highly engaged but work relatively few hours, so managers should invest in creating a culture of both engagement and productivity.