The Gallup Engagement Index 2012 shows: German employees are only little committed with their employers - an alarming result. A quarter (24%) of the persons employed have already internally resigned and 61% practice simply work-to-rule. Only 15% of the persons employed are emotionally high engaged to their employer and attach volutarily to its goals.
Fig. 1: Gallup - Engagment Index
Within the timeframe between August to December 2012 a number of 2198 people employed (from 18 years onwards) were interviewed via phone for the study on their engagement and motivation at work.
Employees without emotional engagement show less self-initiative, willingness to perform plus responsibility - and are more often absent. Due to absenteeism caused by missing or little emotional engagement annual costs of 18.3 milliards Euro evolve for the German economy. The follow-up costs for enterprises and economy through productivity losses are up to 112 - 138 milliards Euro according to Gallup-estimations.
Disengaged employees are without new ideas in contrast to emotional engaged employees, who in average ad 45% more suggestions for improvements (!) into the business context, as their disengaged colleagues.
The leadership behavior is responsible for employee engagement, as if requirements and expectations of motivated employees - over a longer period of time - get ignored, denies arise. If the manager is approachable and is able to listen to new ideas and recommendations real improvements can be achieved. 2001 only 15% of the interviewees were counted towards to group not engaged employees and in 2007 round 20%, whereas in 2012 the results reached the peak of 24%. Increasingly more employees drift into internal resignation and therefore enterprises urgently need to take more care of their employees - this counts for all occupational groups.
Conclusion:
Attentive leadership behavior and effective initiatives for employee engagement are the crucial success criteria with regards to the ability for innovation of enterprises. The central question for us: Where do all the millions expensed for leadership development flow into, without apparently not having an effect? Please WAKE UP!