How good is the UK at employee engagement?

Employee engagement is on a journey in the UK. The term “employee engagement” only started to enter discussions 40 years ago and the concept of having a business function responsible for employee engagement is an even newer concept.

For the organisations that have embraced employee engagement and weaved it into their culture and business strategy, they are now reaping the rewards. These statistics from Engage for Success  speak for themselves:

• Businesses with engagement scores in the top quartile had twice the annual net profit of those in the bottom quartile.
• Organisations in the top quartile of employee engagement scores had 18% higher productivity than those in the bottom quartile.
• Organisations with high levels of engagement have 40% lower staff turnover rates than companies with lower levels of engagement.
• Organisations with top quartile engagement scores average 12% higher customer advocacy.

But despite the very clear business benefits of employee engagement, we are still presented with statistics that paint a bleak picture for much of the UK workforce.

• The UK and western Europe have the lowest employee engagement levels across the globe at just 11%. 
• 38% of UK employees plan to leave their job in the next 6 months. 
• Employee disengagement costs the UK economy £340 billion annually.

Driven by the statistics above, we wanted to find out just how good, or bad, UK businesses are at employee engagement. More specifically, we wanted to understand how widespread employee engagement is as a standalone business function. Is it still predominately the big brand organisations that are the masters of employee engagement or has the ethos trickled down into smaller organisations?

To find out we embarked on a survey in which we interviewed over 200 internal communication professionals.

The results show that the evolution of employee engagement still has a long way to go in much of the UK.

For example, our research found that 48% of UK organisations do not monitor the effectiveness of their internal comms. That’s almost half of UK organisations that carry out internal communications completely blind with absolutely no idea how those messages are being received.

The research did however find some glimmers of hope. Employee engagement is now more widespread with many mid-sized organisations starting to consider how it can benefit their businesses. There are also some sectors that shine much brighter than their counterparts.

Have a look at the report – UK Employee Engagement: The State of Play – to see how your organisation compares. The report also includes guidance on how you can overcome the blockers that are preventing you from evolving your employee engagement strategy.