It’s time to face the facts. If you’re a CEO or business leader, the only thing that you should be worrying about is your employees’ commitment and engagement. If you don’t have this then you have nothing. New Deloitte Global Human Capital Research shows that to be successful today, organizations must create meaningful, humanistic work environments in order to propel engagement, increase performance and attract talent. From this major study of human capital trends around the world involving 2,500 organizations in 90 countries, the message is clear: people matter.
The Big Sad Ironic Pic
Globally, Gallup research shows us that only 13 percent of workers are engaged while the bulk – 87 percent – are not. Of the latter, ⅓ are actively sabotaging your company. Worldwide, low employee engagement is a huge problem that saps productivity and robs your business of immense potential. Tie this in with the fact that the Deloitte study confirms that engagement is of the top 2 urgent issues facing business today and this next number may surprise you. Across the world, companies on average will only be spending 1.32 percent more on HR in 2014.
Here’s 5 more findings of the Deloitte report that show the need for more focus on people:
- Overwhelm – ⅔ of today’s employees feel “overwhelmed” and ⅔ of business leaders cite “the overwhelmed employee” as a top business challenge. The concept of work-life balance has been lost in the mix. However, tired and stressed people are not the way for your business to achieve improved productivity, innovation or competitiveness.
- Work overload – 40 per of men work over 50 hours per week and 80 percent of them would like to work less. People want more out of life than just work. They want, and need, a life outside of work.
- Constant distractions – people are too distracted and are flooded with too many emails, conference calls, meetings, texts and other distractions. In fact, people are only able to focus for 7 minutes at a time, before being distracted.
- Leadership Gap – globally the most urgent issue identified was the need to develop new and better leaders: leaders who get the changing expectations of the workforce.
- Workplace culture – the second most urgent issue companies face today is retention and engagement. Creating work environments that outsiders are drawn to and where insiders feel valued, happy and want to give their best is a prime need identified by businesses everywhere.
In spite of these issues being acknowledged, most companies still haven’t developed ownership of them. While I agree that a 1.32 percent increase in HR spending over last year is movement in the right direction, I’d argue that it’s paltry given the need and the benefit.
Time to Step Up to the Plate
While we all must take some ownership of learning better how to deal with distractions, how to focus and take better care of ourselves, businesses need to do more. Way more.
HR and business leaders have to wake up and act on their knowledge and the research. It’s clear that the desire for better leaders, engaged people and positive organizational cultures are top business priorities globally. People everywhere are looking for more at work. They expect work to be fun and engaging. We all want our work to be meaningful and satisfying on deep levels. And we will follow leaders who inspire us and respect us.
Again, the way I see it, engaged employees are all you need to worry about. The rest will follow.
