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Low Engagement Costs UK Businesses £60 billion a Year

60 bn reportIn January and February of this year, we collaborated with independent third-party firm Coleman Parkes Research to conduct 500 detailed interviews with line of business/operations managers, HR professionals, and employees representing a cross section of UK-based organizations employing more than 600 employees. Our objective was to understand the current state of employee engagement in the UK.  What we found was that UK employees feel overburdened and not as engaged and productive in their jobs as their management would like them to be.  The cost of that productivity loss is approximately £60 billion per year,  according to the survey report.  The research identifies a variety of factors that impact employee engagement including:

  • 58% find their workload to be unrealistically heavy.
  • Employees say they spend 7 percent of their working week on unnecessary administrative tasks.
  • 72% of respondents cite reliance on manual systems as a source of lost productivity.
  • Only 34% of respondents rate employee engagement as strong in their organisation.
  • 59% of respondents think the CEO is only focused on the numbers, rather than the
    people who deliver the work.

Pay was low on the list of reasons why employees would leave their job, ranking ninth out of 11 potential reasons for resigning. Employees are most likely to leave their company if they don't feel valued, with 60 percent naming this as factor that would lead them to resign.

These results are completely consistent with prior research that we and others have done.  You can't buy your way into your employees' hearts and minds.  You can, however, invest in the drivers of engagement.  Create and communicate a vision employees can believe in, train them, give them the tools they need to do their jobs, and develop managers who coach them and recognize them for a job well done. Investing in these things that matter most to employees will yield returns in higher productivity and willingness to go the extra mile for your customers and your organization.

 

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