Disengaged employees can have a huge effect on the working environment. When your workforce is engaged, there are countless benefits such as improved team performance, increased productivity, higher retention rates and lower turnover, fewer instances of absenteeism, and much more.
On the other hand, if your employees are disengaged, it can have a massive negative effect on your business. It could cost you thousands of dollars.
To keep your employees on board and motivated requires communication and effective relationships. It’s also vital for your employees to feel valued and that they have a part to play in your overall business plan.
Research says just 13% of people are engaged at work so it is something all businesses need to take seriously.
In this article, you’ll learn about disengagement, its causes, what to look for, and how to bring your workforce around.
What is a Disengaged Employee?
When it comes to defining what disengaged employees are, it goes much deeper than them being unhappy or dissatisfied with their role.
A disengaged employee will say negative things about the company they work for openly. They’ll actively look for alternative employment and not be interested in helping your company to grow.
Disengaged employees interested in being part of the team and solving problems and even making progress within the business.
What Causes Employees Disengagement?
According to a poll by Gallup, 52% of employees in the US are disengaged. There are several reasons why this happens, for example:
- Poor leadership
- Lack of feedback
- Poor communication
- Lack of opportunities
- Lack of a recognition program
- Unhappy about benefits and pay
- Few appropriate resources
- No sense of purpose
- Not aligned with the company objectives and goals
- Little interest in employees well-being
Signs of a Disengaged Employee
You need to keep a lookout for some signs if you’re worried about a disengaged workforce. Knowing what to look for means, you’ll be in an excellent position to do something about it.
- Withdrawal from activities or conversations and only doing the minimum in order to get by
- Poor communication including not participating in meetings
- Changes in their routines
- Silence is one of the most prominent signs, either over email, team calls, or completely missing meetings
- An unusual level of apathy or a lack of commitment
- Increased absenteeism
- Complacency
- Quality of work declines
- Worker becomes inefficient
- Doesn’t want to participate
- Naysaying opportunities and new ideas
- Rudeness
Ways that Disengaged Employees Can Impact Your Business
Employee engagement is key for workplace productivity. If your employees aren’t engaged, it will impact your business success in the following ways.
Staff turnover: Staff retention is directly linked with staff retention. People tend to leave their jobs because they don’t enjoy the work, feel their strengths aren’t recognised, or they’re not getting any opportunities to grow.
Customer experience: If your workforce is engaged, it improves customer experience. Engaged employees will pull out all the stops to keep your customers happy.
Absenteeism: This can affect the productivity and efficiency of the rest of the team.
Work quality: The quality of a person’s work will decline when they’re feeling disengaged.
Broken communication: A disengaged employee will only do the bare minimum, and collaboration and communication often break down. This, in turn, creates uncertainty and feeds distrust.
What You Can Do About a Disengaged Employee
Addressing employee disengagement is critical if you want to avoid it spreading through your workforce. There are two essential steps you can take:
First: Identify your disengaged employees, and then help them by changing their responsibilities, providing training, improving their working conditions, developing a clear advancement path, or managing change.
Second: Set performance targets but don’t assign tasks outside areas of expertise. Focus on what they are good at and encourage.
Third: Remove from the company a disengaged employee you cannot rehabilitate.
How to Handle Disengaged Employees
Having a disengaged employee is not the end of the world. However, you must address the problem if you want to protect the company culture.
Manage workflow: Identity what might be causing problems
Create checklists: Guide them on how to do things give them process documentation that gives them a single source of truth.
Collaboration: Feeling part of the team is key that is why collaboration is important.
Mentor and Communication: Make them feel they have support at all times.
Checklists Support Employees
How Checkify can help disengaged employees? Process management or checklists get people to be able to perform tasks to the highest possible standards and reduce mistakes. The checklists are there to support work, give confidence to the person performing the task.
Workflow management enables you to see how they are progressing what tasks they are stuck on and be able to comment and offer to advice on the task. How much work is being accomplished and identify areas that need additional training?