Employee Engagement Is Broken. Here is A STARTER GUIDE TO HELP FIX IT.
Employee engagement is falling apart right before our eyes, and every business leader needs to see the warning signs.
Gallup's latest polls show that employee engagement has dropped in historic fashion. In 2024, global employee engagement dropped to 21%. That is a two-point fall from last year, and last year’s numbers were already a whisper, not a roar. The result? A staggering $438 billion loss in productivity. That is the GDP of a medium-sized country, gone. Vanished into thin air. Here's the link to read the full report.
Meanwhile, managers who are supposed to be lifting everyone up are even more disengaged than the teams they lead. We have the disengaged leading the disengaged, and it is creating real issues.
When the ship is leaking, more ping pong tournaments will not plug the holes. More awkward Zoom happy hours will not steer us to safe harbor. Engagement comes from one place and one place only.
It comes from values.
We have talked to more than a million people around the world about what makes them tick. Across 152 languages and 180 countries, the story is always the same. Human values, not age, gender, or job title, are the operating system behind every decision we make. When you know what people value, you know how to engage them. All that research identified 56 shared human values, from Personal Growth to Trustworthiness to Community. These are the real drivers behind every job someone cares about, every organization someone commits to, every boss someone chooses to follow.
When workplaces align with the core values of their people, here is what happens:
Engagement goes up by 40%
Employees show a 12% increase in willingness to accept lower pay if their values are respected
(( BTW, Of course I'm not suggesting salary cuts. The point is: when you align with what matters most to people, money matters less.))
Begin with our list of 56 values compiled from talking to a million people around the world. Just ask people which ones are most meaningful to them. In fact, the list of 56 values is included in our STARTER GUIDE FOR VALUES CONVERSATIONS AT WORK (download here) which should help. It may not be a perfect science, as most people are not even consciously aware of their core values, but it is exponentially better than doing nothing. That first conversation about values will set the ball in motion: it proves that you want to move from superficial fixes to foundational engagement. It will prompt everyone to think differently.
At a time when every dollar, every ounce of energy, and every act of leadership matters more than ever, building a values-driven workplace is the smartest investment you can make.
Values are the answer. Let's put them to work.
