20 Signs of Employee Disengagement

Employee engagement seems to be the current hot topic of survey organizations. Gallup, Mercer, BlessingWhite, and others are regularly conducting national and international studies of engagement. It’s interesting to discover from these surveys that roughly 30% of employees indicate that they are engaged in their work.

However, the more important question for you is, “Do I have an employee engagement problem in my organization?" You don’t need an organization-wide survey to answer this question. Pay attention to what your employees are saying and doing. Look and listen for the clues. Jim Stilwell, of Arborquest Consulting, and I have identified twenty tell-tale signs of disengagement. They are:

1. High turnover – the rate of employees leaving the organization is greater than what you want in this type of business
2. Absenteeism – the amount of time workers are gone from their jobs is hurting performance
3. Disgruntled/complaining/whining employees – negative comments about the work and the organization have become common place and are poisoning the environment
4. Time off-task resolving employee problems – you and other managers are spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with individual problems and with conflicts among employees
5. Employees and managers blaming others – people bring complaints to you without accepting any responsibility for their contribution to the problems
6. Lack of teamwork – employees resist cooperation and collaboration on tasks that require teamwork to succeed
7. Lack of performance feedback – employees don’t know where they stand in terms of their performance; they don’t know from day to day if they are doing well or doing poorly and what they need to do to improve
8. Lack of learning – employees don’t ask for opportunities to learn different jobs, improve their skills in their current jobs, or prepare for future positions
9. Difficulty attracting and retaining talent – you can’t find the right people for the work that needs to get done; when you do have the right people, they tend to be attracted to opportunities elsewhere
10. Difficulty developing talent, especially leadership talent – few employees are aspiring to or stepping up to leadership roles on teams, on projects, and for open positions
11. Poor product and service quality – employees are not doing their best work, are not paying attention to customer needs, and are not showing a high level of concern for quality
12. Customer dissatisfaction – you are hearing customer complaints that could have been prevented if employees cared more about the work that they are doing
13. Vendor dissatisfaction – you are hearing complaints from vendors that could have been prevented if employees cared more about their relationships with external business suppliers and partners
14. Low compliance with rules, regulations, and processes – employees are not attending to the legal and normative expectations of the organization; they are putting the organization at risk by their complacency
15. Theft, shrinkage, and waste – these inventory and operational losses are happening at a higher rate than what can be tolerated in this kind of business
16. High injury rate and poor safety – employees are neglecting the standards that create a safe work environment
17. Lack of innovation and creativity – you are not hearing new product and service ideas and new problem-solving suggestions from employees
18. Lack of initiative – employees are not acting on their own to start new projects that contribute to the ongoing success of the organization
19. Lack of trust – employees don’t come to you with their concerns, suggestions, and new ideas; they don’t ask for help in handling challenging tasks and interpersonal situations
20. Lack of recognition and celebration – employees don’t take time to publicly acknowledge the success of individuals, the success of teams, and the success of the organization as a whole

If you see any of these behaviors in your organization, then you probably have an employee engagement problem.  You don’t need to do another survey. You need to start addressing the problem before you lose the hearts and minds of your most talented employees.