What are the negative consequences of disengaged employees?
1. Discontent and attrition
Engagement levels help keep the employees interested in their job yielding better results. According to a survey conducted by Gallup, (http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/190445/negative-impact-disengaged-employees-germany.aspx) 3/4th of employees are dissatisfied with the jobs they are employed. Disengaged employees don’t care about the work allocated to them which will ultimately lead you to get beaten by your competition.
Moreover, once dissatisfied employees start leaving and the news spreads, social media coverage and sources like Glassdoor makes it difficult to attract new talent. Today, the culture of a company attracts more employees especially among the millennials, than the actual position itself. If you don’t have the appropriate culture set for your company or invest in building one, it will be an uphill task to retain your employees.
2. Negative customer impact
Detached employees often create a damaging impression on your customers. If your company involves direct communication between customers and employees, a customer can quickly understand and judge if there’s a problem with the organization.
An employee won’t necessarily say negative things about your company but if the positive advocacy is absent, it will reflect on their customer communication. Remember, a positive experience is typically only shared with your friends and family, but negative impressions are way more enthusiastically shared in social media.
 |
Find out how Liz built high-performing teams on Journyz.
|
3. Loss of money, productivity, and good employees
No points for guessing, these three things are largely interconnected. If you won’t have good employees or you have constant turnover, it leads to stifling productivity with direct monetary impact.
Disengaged employees are often unaware of their company’s goals, mission or vision. Only 40% of employees are aware of their company's goals. If you don’t understand the objective of your work, the definition of success for your results could be way off. This lack of understanding could also result weakening your workforce, flatlining your innovation, and engagement from other employees and ultimately your outcomes.
4. Affects brand value causing unhappy shareholders and investors
Building a brand takes a lot of time, years, sometimes decades. Imagine the consequences of late deliveries, negative messaging on social media platforms or on hiring portals. These things can spread like wildfire harming the hard earned reputation of a company. Additionally, a company is judged by the employees it hires. All these impacts could result in unhappy shareholders or investors, resulting in damage to your brand value.
5. Disengaged Employees make costly mistakes or result in increase in safety incidents
Once the feeling of discontent arises, employees often start misjudging and mistrusting you causing costly disengagement. According to Gallup, disengaged employees cost $450-$550 billion annually for their mistakes. That’s an enormously high number of mistakes caused by unsatisfied employees which could be corrected with the right attention from the company.
Conclusion
Disengaged employees are a drag on companies in financial and nonfinancial ways. Companies should make it a priority to implement engagement programs. Simple things like having an open door policy, giving regular feedbacks and timely appreciation make a big difference in engagement levels. You can also practice engaging strategies like gamification or events to enhance your engagement strategies.
These are definitely worth it for companies; after all, companies who have adopted engagement strategies earn more than twice the revenue with those engaged employees who stay and grow with the organization.
