State of Engagement™
To provide organisations with a way of defining and measuring employee engagement, we've developed a research methodology called the State of Engagement™. It is built around two key dimensions: intellectual clarity and emotional connection.
Clarity focuses on what the individual knows or understands about the organisation and his or her role within it whilst connection focuses on how the individual reacts to this knowledge and feels about the organisation. Different combinations of each will yield some very different engagement profiles.
To establish a benchmark against which organisations can compare their own levels of engagement, we invited a sample of over 1,400 people to answer a range of questions allowing us to rate their overall clarity and connection. The sample was drawn from all industry sectors and across all levels and business functions and the research conducted by Ciao!
The results provide us the following engagement profile for the UK:
The results allow us to draw some fundamental conclusions about employee engagement in the UK.
- Just 13% of employees are fully engaged which means 87% are in some way dissatisfied with the relationship with their employer;
- One in four is in the 'red zone' which denotes a significant degree of disengagement;
- Approaching half occupy the middle ground, neither engaged nor disengaged. Their neutrality and sheer numbers mean they hold the balance of power in many organisations;
- Just 16% have strong connection, exactly half the proportion with high clarity. This suggests that driving connection rather than clarity is a bigger engagement priority.
You can find further detail about the various indicators, differences by industry, business function and job role and why this really matters by downloading the full report (PDF).
We can run the State of Engagement™ survey for you so you can understand much more about employee engagement in your organisation and how to improve it. We can also compare your results to the UK norms so you can see more easily exactly where your priorities should lie.