Coming out of one of the worst recessions of our generation and with unemployment still above 8%, who would believe that employee engagement, or rather the lack thereof, is a major issue in the U.S. economy?

Yet it is! HR Solutions International, a large Human Resource Services firm has been tracking employee engagement for a number of years and just released its 2011 finding that U.S. Employee Engagement levels increased from 2010 to 2012. The data is comprised of employee survey responses from more than 3.3 million employees at over 2,400 organizations.

The number of Actively Engaged employees increased two percentage points from 27 percent in 2010 to 29 percent in 2011. The presumption is that companies let actively disengaged personnel go.

It is not the shift from year to year that I want to address here, although it is obviously encouraging that engagement appears to have inched up, attributed in large part by HR Solutions International to companies removing lower performers, including a large number of actively disengaged employees, from their ranks.

It should be an eye opener for all of us to see that in this day and age from 3.3 million employees a full 71% are either ambivalent about their engagement in the business they are working for or outright actively disengaged!

What befuddles me is the question why anybody - let alone a large majority of us - would tolerate to be ambivalent about or disengaged from the activity that occupies most of our waking moments? The other question that comes to mind and that I can't answer is: "Why would any leader of an organization tolerate this"? If times are difficult and competition is fierce, as it always is, can you imagine what difference it would make if everyone in the company earning a paycheck would be actively engaged? What is the hold-up?

Of course, the numbers for individual organizations will vary widely. HR Solutions International does not provide detail on the deviation from the norm, but I will assume that there are plenty of businesses around where the employee engagement is much higher than 29% and even near perfect.

The leader of an organization should not be in the dark about the level of employee engagement in his/her organization. It is not hard to assess. Any interested bystander can fairly quickly and accurately gauge the level of employee engagement. Certainly customers can. Anyone transacting with an organization can reliably determine if the people they are transacting with are engaged or not.

Engagement is evidenced much more by actions and omissions from the people inside the organization than by their words, or the slogans and tag-lines used by the company. A high level of employee engagement is undoubtedly a competitive advantage. So, the question arises what to do if a leader of an organization finds the employee engagement in his/her business lacking?

Probably the first thing to do is look at him/her self!
1. Has the leader of the organization clearly articulated the mission for the business and involved the employees in the process, or - at least - obtained the buy-in from the employees?
2. Has the leader of the organization been clear about the values to be adhered to in the pursuit of
that mission and involved the employees in that process, or - at least - obtained their buy-in?
3. Is the leader of the organization personally and actively working on people development:
a. Hiring the right talent for the job
b. Providing training, coaching and education
c. Protecting and enforcing the values and the culture
d. Dealing quickly with non-performers and disengaged personnel
e. Insisting on a solid work-life balance
f. Stimulating healthy behavior

One has to believe that the 71% of employees who are either ambivalent about their engagement with the organization they work for or actively disengaged are not happy with that situation. Wouldn't they come home from work with a much better attitude if they had felt that they had been actively engaged in something they believe in and support? Wouldn't they feel much better about themselves if they felt that they had spent their working hours on something productive?

Wouldn't they work much better with their supervisors, peers and customers and with much higher intensity - if they felt actively engaged?

A small business in particular cannot afford to run on less than all cylinders. Every cog in the machinery has to perform reliably for the outcome to be in conformity with the expectations. Without a very high level of employee engagement this cannot be achieved.

(Frans Jager is Principal at Castnet Corp. (www.castnetcorp.net) a Business Consultant for the Green Industry and an Executive Coach. He frequently writes about matters pertaining to the Green Industry. He can be reached at castnetcorp@gmail.com ©2012 Castnet Corp. All rights reserved.